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A note on split ergativity in Burushaski1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Étienne Tiffou  and
Yves-Charles Morin
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Extract

In his pioneer work on the Burushaski language, Lorimer (1935a:64) noted the existence of what has been later described as an ergative construction: the subject of a transitive verb is in the ergative case (a special case, usually marked by the suffix-e) while the subject of inttransitive verbs, as well as the object of transitive verbs, are in the absolutive case (morphologically unmarked) as appears in the examples 1(a)-(c) below:

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 1982 , pp. 88 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1982

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References

REFERENCES

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