Abstract

A Jewel Inlaid:
Ergativity and Markedness in Nepali

Luke Lindemann
2019

Nepali presents with a complex case marking pattern in which ergative case is
obligatory in perfective transitive clauses, disallowed in unaccusative intransitive
clauses and copular clauses, and varies with the nominative elsewhere. Where erga-
tive marking is variable, its usage correlates with a variety of semantic and pragmatic
factors. The purpose of this investigation is to precisely delineate the grammatical
domains for which ergative marking is variable and to provide a unified analysis of
the semantic and pragmatic factors that correlate with its expression.
The study of pragmatic phenomena requires the implementation of multiple strate-
gies for collecting language data. The data for this investigation come from four con-
verging lines of inquiry: descriptions of the Nepali pattern in the literature, targeted
elicitations with thirteen native speakers, the implementation of a grammaticality
judgment survey in Kathmandu in 2016, and the analysis of a published corpus of
spoken Nepali.
The analysis found ergative marking to be obligatory in perfective main clauses
and variable in subordinate clauses. What appears to be active marking in intransitive
clauses is analyzed as ergative marking in transitive clauses with covert objects. The
only categorical split is the distinction between perfective and non-perfective verb
forms. Every other association was found to be non-categorical.
These non-categorical associations include a positive correlation between subjects
with inanimate reference and the expression of ergativity in common nouns, and a
negative correlation between first person pronouns and ergativity in the pronominal
domain. This follows expected patterns of marking based on the types which are
most frequent in discourse. Ergative marking is somewhat associated with highly
individuated objects, but not with affected objects.
Ergative marking is positively associated with characterizing or individual-level
predicates, kind readings, categorical propositions, and strong construals of quan-
tifiers. There was no correlation found between ergative marking and agency or
volitionality.
The unified analysis of these associations contributes to theories of Optional Erga-
tive Marking and to optional case marking systems in general. The main claim is that
the Nepali ergative marks an effector of the event described by the clause. This term
refers to a participant which is implicated in enacting and effecting the event, but is
not necessarily its main controller or instigator. As a component of the ergative case
marking system, it has a pragmatic usage, implicating the subject as a participant in
a prototypically transitive event. Aspects of this analysis contribute to the general
theory of Optional Ergative Marking and its relation to argument proto-roles. Asso-
ciations between the ergative and prototypical properties of a transitive event arise
from the meaning of the ergative marker as an effector. This analysis also provides
a straightforward explanation for the lack of volitional correlations in Nepali that we
find in other languages with variable ergativity.
Other semantic and pragmatic features are associated with discourse prominence.
These include the correlation with categorical propositions and characterizing predi-
cates. Here the associations are attributable to general principles of semantic marked-
ness. Variable ergativity represents the presence of pragmatic implicatures of various
strengths. Gradient markedness oppositions can lead to the conventionalization of
these associations into semantic entailments. This is demonstrated for English gen-
der marking, the association between ergative marking and semantic properties of the
transitive subject in Nepali, and the association between ergative marking and Nepali
perfective verb forms.
 A Jewel Inlaid:
Ergativity and Markedness in Nepali

A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of
Yale University
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

by
Luke Lindemann

Dissertation Director: Dr. Claire Bowern

May 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Luke Lindemann
All rights reserved.

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Contents

1 Preliminaries 1
1.1 Introduction to the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Nepali and its Speakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.1 A Brief History of the Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 The Languages of Nepal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Ergativity and Basic Alignment Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3.1 Alignment Splits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4 Relevant Features of Nepali Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.1 Nominal Morphology and Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The -le postposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
The -lāi postposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.4.2 Verbal Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Copular Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.5 Ergativity in Nepali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.5.1 The development of Ergativity in Indo-Aryan . . . . . . . . . 25

2 Methodologies 28
2.1 The Necessity of a Multifaceted Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2 Elicitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2.1 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.2 Advantages and Limitations of Elicitation . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.3 Grammaticality Judgment Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.3.1 Survey Respondents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.2 Advantages and Limitations of the Kathmandu Survey . . . . 40
2.4 Corpus Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.4.1 The NNSP Corpus Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.4.2 Annotation Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4.3 Advantages and Limitations of Corpus Analysis . . . . . . . . 53
2.5 The Problem of Lect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

3 Theories 59
3.1 General explanations of the Nepali Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.1.1 Case Marking in Traditional Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.1.2 Disambiguation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.1.3 Animacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

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 3.1.4 Stage-Level and Individual-Level Predication . . . . . . . . . 67
Stage-Level Predication in Nepali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.1.5 Perfectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.1.6 The Intransitive Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.1.7 Ergative Marking in Particular Structures and Tenses/Aspects 76
Hypothetical Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Optative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Definite Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Modal Constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.1.8 Multiple Factor Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.1.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.2 General Theories of Optional Ergativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2.2 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Ergative Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Typology of Split Case Marking systems . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3.2.3 Discriminative Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.2.4 Transitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
The Transitivity Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Argument Proto-Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Causal Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
3.2.5 Markedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
The Nominal Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
A Formal Implementation of the Nominal Hierarchy . . . . . 112
Markedness Extensions: Prototypes, Reversals, and Hierarchies 116
Criticisms of Markedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
3.2.6 Discourse Prominence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Focus, Topic, and the Question Under Discussion . . . . . . . 123
Intonation, Word Order, and Discourse Particles . . . . . . . 127
Categorical Propositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Prominence and Markedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

4 Observations 138
4.1 Ergative marking and the interpretation of the Event . . . . . . . . . 140
4.1.1 Ergativity and the Nepali Verb Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
The Perfective Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
The Present Imperfective Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
The Past Habitual Imperfective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
The Definite Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
The Hypothetical Future, Optative, and Imperative Mood . . 149
Subordinate Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
4.1.2 Intransitive Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Unaccusative Predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Unergative Semelfactives/Verbs of Emission . . . . . . . . . . 160
Ergativity and Volitionality in the Intransitive Domain . . . . 162

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 Telicity and Motion Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Unergative Atelic Predicates and “Do” Light Verbs . . . . . . 166
Ergativity and Transitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
4.1.3 Ergativity in Copular Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Brief observations on the dual copula system . . . . . . . . . . 171
4.1.4 Summary of the domains of ergative marking . . . . . . . . . 174
4.1.5 Individual-Level Predication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Judgments on Ergative Marking and Habitual Interpretations 177
4.1.6 Transitivity and the Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
4.2 Ergative marking and the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
4.2.1 The Nominal Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Inanimate Common Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
4.2.2 Agency and Volitionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
4.2.3 Kind Readings of the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
4.2.4 Sets and Strong Construals of Quantifiers . . . . . . . . . . . 202
4.2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
4.3 Argument Realization and Case Frequency in the NNSP Sample . . . 205
4.4 Ergative marking and the Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
4.4.1 Ergative marking and the Realization of the Object . . . . . . 212
4.4.2 Affectedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
4.4.3 Connectedness to the Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
4.4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
4.5 Ergativity and the Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
4.5.1 Topic, Focus, and Word Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
4.5.2 Categorical Propositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
4.5.3 QUD, Definiteness, and Aboutness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
4.5.4 Ergative Marking and the (Implied) Question . . . . . . . . . 229
4.5.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
4.6 Overall Summary of Feature Correlations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

5 The Syntactic Profile of Nepali Ergativity 235

5.1 Morphological and Syntactic Ergativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
5.1.1 Subjecthood Diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Reflexivization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Syntactic ergativity in Dyirbal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
5.1.2 Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
5.1.3 Lack of Covert Ergative Case in Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . 242
5.2 Theories of Syntactic Ergativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
5.2.1 Structural Case, Inherent Case, and Dependent Case . . . . . 244
5.2.2 Structural versus Inherent Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Nonfinite Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
5.2.3 Marantz’ Ergative Case Generalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
5.2.4 Legate’s Typology of Ergative Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

v
 Lack of Accusative Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Caseless DPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Cases in Nonfinite Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Multiple Absolutives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
5.2.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

6 Discussions 261
6.1 A Prototype Analysis of the Nepali Ergative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
6.1.1 Peripheral Usages of -le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
6.1.2 Agents and Effectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
6.2 On Markedness and Variability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
6.2.1 Opposition with a Zero Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
6.2.2 Obligatory Marking and Grammatical Context . . . . . . . . 272
6.2.3 Gradient Markedness in English Gender Marking . . . . . . . 277
6.2.4 Gradient Markedness on the Transitive Subject . . . . . . . . 280
6.3 Variable Ergativity and Prominence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
6.3.1 Predicate Prominence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
6.4 Ergativity and Event Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
6.4.1 Ergative Marking in Transitive Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
6.4.2 The Connection between Ergativity and Perfectivity . . . . . 296

7 Conclusions 300

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List of Figures

1.1 Nepali-speaking Regions of South Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.2 L1 Speakers of Language Varieties in Nepal (2011 Census) . . . . . . 9
1.3 Provinces of Nepal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4 Accusative and Ergative Alignment, adapted from Dixon (1994: 9) . 11
1.5 Neutral, Tripartite, and Active-Inactive Alignment . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.6 Incidence of Ergativity in the World’s Languages (data from WALS
online) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.7 Ergative Case-Marking in a Language with a Perfective/Imperfective
Split . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.8 Nepali Case Marking on Common Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.9 Nepali Case Postpositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.10 Nepali Verb Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.11 Nepali Copulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.12 Ergative marking in Nepali (according to Li 2007) . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.1 Nepali-speaking Elicitation Consultants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

2.2 Kathmandu Survey: Item C3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.3 Kathmandu Survey: Item C3 (English Translation) . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.4 Kathmandu Survey Respondent Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.5 NNSP Annotation Example (from interview V001001001) . . . . . . . 44
2.6 Interviewer Data from the NNSP Sample Interviews . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.7 Birth Regions of Nepali Speakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.8 Ergative Marking in Imperfective Clauses by Speaker . . . . . . . . . 58

3.1 Nepali Kāraka: Argument Roles (Pradhān 1944) . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.2 Nepali Vibhakti: Nominal Cases (Pradhān 1944) . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.3 Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s Transitivity Prototype . . . . . . . . 86
3.4 Dowty (1991)’s Proto-roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.5 General vs. Narrow Meaning of Unmarked; based on Andrews (1990:
154) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
3.6 Aspects of Marked and Unmarked Forms (Battistella 1996: 71) . . . 104
3.7 The Nominal Hierarchy as represented in Dixon (1994: 85) . . . . . . 108
3.8 Ergative and accusative splits in four languages . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.9 Hindi Differential Object Marking; based on (Aissen 2003: 459) . . . 114
3.10 Summary of the Prototypical Subject and Object . . . . . . . . . . . 118
3.11 Summary of Features from McGregor (2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

vii
4.1 Ergative Marking Results by Verb Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.2 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Perfective Transitive Clauses . . . . 143
4.3 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Simple Present Transitive Clauses . 146
4.4 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Present Continuous Transitive Clauses146
4.5 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Definite Future Transitive Clauses . 148
4.6 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Hypothetical Future Transitive Clauses150
4.7 Corpus Results: ERG/NOM in Subordinate Clauses . . . . . . . . . . 154
4.8 Ergative Marking Results for Intransitive Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . 157
4.9 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Unaccusative Predicates . . . . . . 159
4.10 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Verbs of Emission . . . . . . . . . . 161
4.11 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Telic Intransitives . . . . . . . . . . 164
4.12 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Unergative Atelic Verbs . . . . . . 167
4.13 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Copulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
4.14 Summary of the Domains of Ergativity in Nepali Clauses . . . . . . . 175
4.15 Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Simple Present Transitive Clauses . 182
4.16 Ergative Marking Results in Survey Section C . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
4.17 Survey Results: Individual Strategies for Ergative Marking in Section C183
4.18 Corpus Results: Individual Strategies for Ergative Marking in Section C185
4.19 Ergative Correlations and the Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
4.20 Survey Judgments for Subject Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
4.21 Survey Results: ERG/NOM by Subject Animacy . . . . . . . . . . . 192
4.22 Percentage of Ergative Marking on Overt Transitive Subjects . . . . . 193
4.23 Arguments with Inanimate Reference in Different Argument Positions 194
4.24 Survey Results for Questions with Kind Readings (Section G) . . . . 201
4.25 Ergative Correlations and the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
4.26 Transitive Subject Types in the NNSP Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
4.27 Transitive Object Types in the NNSP Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
4.28 Intransitive Subject Types in the NNSP Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
4.29 Copular Subject Types in the NNSP Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
4.30 Oblique Argument Types in the NNSP Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
4.31 Number of Expressed Arguments in Transitive Clauses . . . . . . . . 210
4.32 Survey Judgements for Transitive Clauses with Overt/Elided Objects 214
4.33 Corpus Results for Object Realization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
4.34 Ergative Correlations and the Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
4.35 Survey Results for Section B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
4.36 Argument Positions in Transitive Present Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . 222
4.37 Ergative Marking Results for Categorical Propositions . . . . . . . . 230
4.38 Ergative Marking Results and Case on the Survey Question . . . . . 231
4.39 Overall Summary of Ergative Feature Correlations . . . . . . . . . . 233

6.1 Properties of Transitive Subjects and Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . 266

6.2 Nepali and Hindi Case Markers in Croft’s Conceptual Space for Par-
ticipant Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
6.3 Noun Phrase Number Marking in English and Nepali . . . . . . . . . 274
6.4 Scale of Markedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

viii
Glossing Conventions and
Abbreviations

For the transliteration of Nepali I employ a modified version of the International Al-
phabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST). I endeavor to adhere to modern Nepali
phonology over traditional orthography. Thus there is no vowel length distinction
except for a/ā, and the traditional anusvara is variably represented as a nasal vowel
or consonant.
1 first person mir.pres mirative present
2 second person neg negation
3 third person nom nominative
abl ablative non.fin non-finite
aor aorist (Tibetan glosses) obl oblique
acc accusative opt optative
arch.pres archaic present pass passive
ben beneficiary perf perfective
caus causative pl plural
clf classifier pres simple present
cond conditional pst past
conj conjunctive adverbial pst.hab past habitual
cont continuous pst.perf past present
ct contrastive topic red reduplicant
cop copula
dat dative
def.fut definite future
dem demonstrative
erg ergative
ego egophoric (Tibetan glosses)
f feminine DAM Differential Agent Marking
foc focus DSM Differential Subject Marking
fut future MIA Middle Indo-Aryan
gen genitive NIA Modern Indo-Aryan
gnom gnomic (Tibetan glosses) NNSP Nepali National Spoken Corpus
hon honorific OEM Optional Ergative Marking
hyp.fut hypothetical future OIA Old Indo-Aryan
imp imperative QUD Question Under Discussion
impf imperfective
instr instrumental
loc locative
m masculine
mir.pst mirative past

ix
Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the members of my dissertation committee: Claire Bowern, Jim

Wood, Kristine Hildebrandt, Paul Kockelman, and Veneeta Dayal. Without your
expertise, coaching, and patience this dissertation would not exist.
Many thanks also to my Nepali friends whose judgments and opinions form the
core of this work: Sushant Banjara, Bibek Basnet, Rijan Maharjan, Timila Dhakwa,
Prashanta Kharel, Anobha Gurung, Kamal Sharma, Min Gurung, Sabin Pyakural,
and Uddhab Pyakurel.
I am indebted to those members of the Yale linguistics faculty past and present
who have advised me and offered their comments and support at different stages
throughout this process: Ashwini Deo, Larry Horn, Maria Piñango, Stephen Ander-
son, and Robert Frank. I am also grateful to the following linguists who have given
me their invaluable advice and opinions: Tikaram Poudel, Madhav Pokharel, Tyler
Peterson, Saartje Verbeke, Dan Raj Regmi, Mark Turin, Hans Boas, and Prem Phyak.
I would also like to thank my research assistants Biplob Acharya and Sajju Tamang
and my tutor Geeta Manandhar for their invaluable contributions to my fieldwork in
Nepal, as well as the members of the Boudha Coterie: Christopher Geissler, Mikaela
Chase, Zara and Loki.
Finally, thank you to those members of the Yale graduate student community
who who commented on versions of this work over the years: Matthew Tyler, Joshua
Phillips, Rikker Dockum, Rashad Ullah, Alysia Harris, Sara Sànchez-Alonso, and
Sarah Babinski.

x
 To Hans, for wash-bears and oak-cats,
To Ashwini, for the Sauraha eye exam,
To the Khatris, for Sangam,
To Claire, a lighthouse for the unmoored,
To Mom, who showed me how,
To Dad, that grain of sand not yet a pearl

xi
Chapter 1

Preliminaries

गौरीको मञ्ु लीला-महल चहिकलो

रत्नशोभाऽिभराम ।

` िहमाल', किविशरोमिण लेखनाथ पौड्ाल

Gauri’s beautiful palace of play,

bedecked with bright lovely jewels…

The Himalaya, Lekhnath Paudyal

(translation by Hutt 1988)

1
1.1 Introduction to the Problem

The Nepali language presents with a complex pattern of subject case marking that
is unique among the languages of the Indo-Aryan family, although variations on this
pattern are found in other languages throughout the Himalayas and in other ergative
languages around the world.

(1) a. sāno kheṭā-le euṭā bhyāgutā pokhari-mā dekh-yo

small child-erg one.clf frog pond-loc see-perf.3.sg
‘The small child saw a frog in the pond.’ [AG]

b. sunita bāṭhi chin

Sunita clever.f cop.pres.3.sg.f
‘Sunita is clever.’ [TD]

c. surya/surya-le cricket khel-cha

Surya/Surya-erg cricket play-pres.3.sg
‘Surya plays cricket.’ [BA]

In (1a) the verb dekhnu ‘to see’ is marked with a perfective form (typically con-
strued in the past tense). The subject, kheṭā, is marked by the ergative case postpo-
sition (-le).1 (1b) is a present tense copular clause. Here the subject, Sunita, is bare.
In (1c), the verb khelnu ‘to play’ is in the simple present tense verb form. The trans-
lation given is the habitual “Surya plays cricket,” but depending on the context it
might also refer to an ongoing event (“Surya is playing cricket”) or a future-oriented
event (“Surya will play cricket”). In this sentence the ergative marker -le may be
either present or absent without affecting the grammaticality of the clause.
In Nepali, there are grammatical domains in which ergative marking is obligatory
on subjects, as in (1a), regions in which it is disallowed, as in (1b), and regions in
which it is variable, as in (1c). Where it is variable, ergative marking correlates
with a variety of semantic and pragmatic factors. These domains of variable ergative
1. The initials after each quote refer to the elicitation consultant with whom I discussed the
particular sentence in question (see section 2.2).

2
marking are not marginal to the language: they represent the rule rather than the
exception. The purpose of this investigation is to delineate these grammatical domains
and provide a unified explanation of the semantic and pragmatic factors that correlate
with the ergative.

This analysis makes two claims about ergative marking in Nepali. The first claim
concerns the particular meaning of the -le marker, which also marks instrumental ar-
guments and reason clauses. I argue that all of these usages of -le mark an Effector
of the event described by the clause. This term refers to a participant which is im-
plicated in enacting and effecting the event, but is not necessarily its main controller
or instigator. As a component of the ergative case marking system, -le has a prag-
matic usage, implicating the subject as a participant in a prototypically transitive
event. This claim applies particularly to the Nepali language, although aspects of
this analysis will be applicable to other languages with variable ergativity. In some
of these languages, ergative marking correlates with agency or volitionality, but this
is not what we find in Nepali. This typological difference is a natural consequence of
the analysis; the Nepali ergative is a marker of an effector rather than a marker of a
prototypically transitive subject.

The second claim is more broadly applicable to variable case marking systems in
which a morphological form varies with its absence. These are also known as optional
case marking (OCM) systems. Such systems are amenable to an analysis in terms of a
markedness asymmetry, in which “optionality” represents the presence of pragmatic
implicatures of various strengths. These implicatures can become conventionalized
as semantic entailments, leading to domains in which marking is either obligatory
or disallowed. This analysis predicts that marking in an OCM system will always
correlate with increased discourse prominence, and in the context of Nepali ergativ-
ity this leads to ergative marking being associated with topicality, definiteness, and
characterizing or individual-level predicates.

3
 The remainder of the current chapter consists of background material on ergativity
and relevant information about Nepali. Section 1.2 is an overview of the Nepali
language and the speakers of Nepali in the linguistic context of the Himalayas. Section
1.3 is a discussion of ergativity and split-ergative patterning. In section 1.4, I discuss
relevant features of the Nepali grammar, particularly the nominal case marking system
and verbal morphology. In section 1.5, I give a basic description of the Nepali ergative
pattern and briefly describe the development of ergativity in the Indo-Aryan family.

Chapter 2 is a discussion of the methodologies I employed for data collection. The

study of pragmatic phenomena requires the implementation of multiple strategies for
collecting language data, as I discuss in 2.1. Sections 2.1-2.4 consist of a detailed
overview of each of the methodologies I employed: targeted elicitations with native
speakers, a written grammaticality judgment survey, and a discourse analysis from a
corpus of transcribed spoken Nepali.

Chapter 3 profiles the theoretical underpinnings of this investigation. The first

part of this chapter consists of an overview of the explanations of the Nepali pattern
that have been given in the literature. In particular, I discuss explanations based on
Disambiguation, Animacy, Individual-Level Predication, and Telicity. These expla-
nations each cover particular domains of the grammar rather than providing a unified
explanation for the pattern. In the second part of chapter 3, I discuss theories of vari-
able ergativity, which is often referred to as Optional Ergative Marking (OEM). In
particular, I examine OEM and its relation to three broader topics in the literature.
The first is Transitivity as it relates to argument prototypes and force-dynamic causal
structure. The second is Markedness as a cornerstone of ergative theory. The third
is Discourse Prominence and in particular the notion of categorical propositions.

In chapter 4, I present the results of the investigation. This chapter is structured

in terms of the various feature associations between ergative marking and properties
of the event (4.1), semantic properties of the subject (4.2), the types of arguments

4
and their frequency in the corpus (4.3), semantic properties of the object (4.4), or
properties of the discourse (4.5). I conclude that all of these features either result
from emphasizing the subject as an effector of a transitive event or as an element
which is discourse-prominent.

In chapter 5, I examine the ergative case marking system and its relationship to
the syntax. I argue that ergativity is limited to case morphology and has a minimal
effect on the syntactic structure of Nepali, even in comparison to related to languages
like Hindi. I suggest that a full analysis of syntactic ergativity in Nepali should rely
on a dependent case analysis.

In chapter 6, I present the details of a prototype analysis of the Nepali ergative.

In section 6.1, I argue for the notion of -le as the marker of an Effector, and discuss its
relationship with the feature association mentioned in chapter 4. In 6.2, I discuss the
relationship between markedness and variability, and argue that markedness repre-
sents a cline of opposition. I analyze gradient markedness with the example of English
gender marking, and then apply this to gradient markedness on the Nepali subject.
Section 6.3 is a discussion of discourse prominence and its relation to categorical
propositions and characterizing predicates. In section 6.4, I discuss the grammatical-
ization of obligatory associations related to ergative marking and event structure.

1.2 Nepali and its Speakers

Nepali (Glottocode: nepa1254, ISO 639-3: npi) is a Northern Zone Indo-Aryan

language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and India (Hammarström et al. 2018). Nepali
and three related languages spoken to the west (Dotyali, Jumli, and Palpa) make
up the Eastern Pahari macrolanguage family.2 Nepali is spoken by about 24 million

2. The Glottolog refers to this macrolanguage (Glottocode: east1436, ISO 6393: nep) as “Eastern
Pahari” and the Ethnologue refers to it as “Nepali (macrolanguage).” I will use the term “Nepali”
to refer to the language and all of its dialects and “Eastern Pahari” to refer to the macrolanguage
group. I use“Nepali” as a demonym for residents of the country of Nepal and “Nepalese” as a general

5
people total.

Figure 1.1: Nepali-speaking Regions of South Asia

In Nepal, Nepali is the official national language as well as the main language of
government and education (Simon and Fennig 2018). It is spoken by around 21 million
people throughout Nepal, of which 12.3 million (or 47% of the country’s population)
are L1 speakers (Malla 2012).3 In India, Nepali is spoken by about 2.9 million people.
Figure (1.2) depicts the regions of South Asia in which Nepali is spoken: Nepal (red),
Bhutan (orange), and surrounding Indian states (dark yellow), particularly Sikkim
and the Darjeeling region of northern West Bengal.4 It is an official state language
in the Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal. In the country of Bhutan, there
descriptor.

3. This number is an aggregate of Census responses of Nepali or any Nepali dialect, of which
Acchami, Baitadeli, Bajhangi, Dailekhi, Dadeldhuri, Bajureli, and Darchuleli were listed in the
census. About 11.8 million speakers (45%) gave “Nepali” as their mother tongue.

4. These and subsequent maps were created with Esri’s ArcGIS software and the ESRI World
Topographical basemap (Esri 2018).

6
currently reside approximately 85,000 speakers of Nepali (Simon and Fennig 2018).
Approximately 100,000 Bhutanese Nepali speakers (who share cultural and historical
ties with Nepalese communities elsewhere) were expelled from Bhutan in the late 20th
century, leading to a refugee crisis and the emigration of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese
refugees to Nepal, India, the United States, and several European countries (Hutt
1996). Additionally, there are significant populations of Non-resident Nepalis who
work and reside in other countries. The 2011 Nepal Census records some 2 million
who reside abroad (7% of the population), with significant populations in India, the
Arab States of the Persian Gulf, Malaysia, Europe, the United States, and Australia
(Malla 2012).

1.2.1 A Brief History of the Language

Nepali was originally the language of the Khas ethnic group from the hill regions of
Western Nepal. Other names for the language that are in common usage in Nepal
include Khas Kurā (meaning the language of the Khas) and Pahari or Parbatiya
(referring to the hill area). The name Nepāl originally referred only to Kathmandu
Valley. The valley has been a dominant cultural and political force in the region
for thousands of years due to its control over trade routes through the Himalayas to
Tibet. In the latter 18th century, Khas from the Gorkha hill region conquered and
unified the kingdoms and hill tribes across modern Nepal and India and supplanted
the (primarily Newari-speaking) former rulers of the kingdoms of Kathmandu Valley.
From their capitol in Kathmandu, the Khas established Nepali as a lingua franca and
language of royal patronage, and in modern times Nepali is the official language of
the state.

Certain aspects of Nepali have more of an affinity with the languages of Western
India and particularly Rajasthan than they do with geographically adjacent languages
like Hindi and Bihari (Wright 1877, Grierson 1904a). From ancient times there have

7
been waves of migration into the hills from India, and these groups of people mixed
with the Khas. The most noteworthy of these waves came during the Mughal invasions
of the 15th century, when there were migrations from the areas around modern-
day Rajasthan. Grierson, who notes a particularly close relationship between Nepali
and the Mewari/Marwari dialects of Rajasthan, theorizes that these newcomers from
Rajasthan mixed with local populations and supplanted the local language.

However, Wallace (1982) and Hutt (1988) object to this claim, arguing that Nepali
already existed in the region and has been minimally influenced by Western Indo-
Aryan languages. In fact, the earliest known Nepali language inscriptions date to
the 13th century (Poudel 2008). The extent to which migration from Rajasthan and
language mixture has had an impact on the grammar of Nepali is an open question.
Grierson (1904a) also describes many aspects of Nepali grammar which are unusual
for Indo-Aryan languages (including the peculiar usage of the ergative case, as well as
grammatical declensions and honorific constructions), and which he believes to be due
to influence from the Tibeto-Burman languages of the Nepal. This is not surprising
considering the linguistic diversity of Nepal and the surrounding Himalayan region.

1.2.2 The Languages of Nepal

About half the population of Nepal speaks Nepali as a first language. The 2011 Nepal
Census records 122 other languages that are spoken as a mother tongue in Nepal. In
Figure (1.2) I have tabulated the number of speakers for major language families and
groups represented in Nepal. About 82% of the population speaks Nepali or another
Indo-Aryan language (of which Maithili, Bhojpuri, and Tharu have over a million
speakers each). Many of these languages are spoken in the Terai, the southern plains
which border India. Tibeto-Burman languages comprise the second biggest group,
representing 17% of the population. Tamang is the only Tibeto-Burman language
with more than a million speakers, and is spoken in the central part of the country.

8
 Nepali Variety Number of L1 Speakers Percentage of Population
Nepali (including dialects) 12,333,525 46.6%
Other Eastern Pahari Languages 506,572 3.0%
Language Families Number of L1 Speakers Percentage of Population
Indo-European 21,742,298 82.1%
Tibeto-Burman 4,592,014 17.3%
Austro-Asiatic 51,912 0.2%
Dravidian 34,829 0.1%
Other 73,508 0.3%
Largest Minority Languages Number of L1 Speakers Percentage of Population
Maithili (Indo-Aryan) 3,092,530 11.7%
Bhojpuri (Indo-Aryan) 1,584,958 6.0%
Tharu (Indo-Aryan) 1,529,875 5.8%
Tamang (Tibeto-Burman) 1,353,311 5.1%
Newari (Tibeto-Burman) 846,557 3.2%
Magar (Tibeto-Burman) 788,530 3.0%

Figure 1.2: L1 Speakers of Language Varieties in Nepal (2011 Census)

Figure 1.3: Provinces of Nepal

There are significant populations of Newari speakers (particularly around Kathmandu

Valley), as well as Kiranti languages (Kiranti, Rai, and Limbu) in the eastern hill
regions. Gurung and Magar are spoken in the west. In the far west, there is a dialect

9
continuum between Nepali and other Eastern Pahari languages (Grierson 1904a). The
greatest dialectal diversity of Nepali also exists in this region.5

There is widescale language shift due to the dominance of Nepali. Many of the
languages of Nepal have become endangered, partially as a result of the intentional
policies of the Nepali government in the latter half of the 20th century, although there
are also political efforts to preserve linguistic diversity in the country (Turin 2007,
Eagle 2008).

I now turn to a discussion of basic alignment patterns and ergative-accusative

splits before focusing on the Nepali alignment system in detail.

1.3 Ergativity and Basic Alignment Patterns

There are many ways for a language to mark the grammatical relations of the ar-
guments in a clause. In a canonical transitive clause, the core arguments are the
transitive subject (St ) and the direct object (O). In a canonical intransitive
clause, the sole core argument is the intransitive subject (Si ).6

(2) a. Sita saw Ram.

St V O

b. Sita laughed.
Si V

The majority of the world’s languages have some means of morphologically demarcat-
5. These provinces were formed in 2015 in accordance with the Constitution of Nepal, and replaced
the previous system of Administrative Zones and Development Regions. As of February 2019, three
of them have been given official names. (Patrika 2018, Deuba 2018).

6. I am adopting the usage of these symbols (Si /St /O) from Keenan (1984). Two other common
conventions are S/A/O (as in Dixon 1994) and S/A/P (as in Comrie 1978). I have chosen Keenan’s
convention because I wish to emphasize an abstract representation of syntactic categories without
making a claim about semantic roles (Agent and Patient). I do not intend to imply by this usage
the theoretical position that Subject is a universal category in every language, although there is
evidence for a unified (St and Si ) subject in Nepali (as I discuss in the Syntax section). Nor am I
implying that nominative-accusative alignment is the default pattern among the world’s languages
and that ergative-absolutive is a marked alignment.

10
ing core arguments (Siewierska 2013b). The two most common strategies are nominal
case-marking (morphological case or adpositions), and verbal crossreference (verbal
agreement in person/gender/number). A language may use either or both of these
strategies.
Nominative-accusative alignment (or just accusative alignment) refers to a
system in which Si and St pattern together in opposition to O. Ergative-absolutive
alignment (or just ergative alignment) refers to a system in which St and O pattern
together in opposition to Si . Figure (1.4) illustrates the basic pattern. In an accusative
language the O is given a special accusative case marking while Si and St are typically
unmarked, and in an ergative language St is given a special ergative case marking while
Si and O are unmarked.7

Figure 1.4: Accusative and Ergative Alignment, adapted from Dixon (1994: 9)

The following example of nominative-accusative patterning comes from the Indo-

Aryan language Bangla:

(3) a. sītā rām-ke dekh-elo

sita.f.nom ram.m-acc see-perf.3.f.sg
‘Sita saw Ram.’8

b. sītā hās-elo
sita.f.nom laugh-perf.3.f.sg
7. Overt nominative case-marking in accusative languages is rare; overt absolutive case-marking
in ergative languages is rarer (Comrie 2013a).

8. These two Bangla examples were provided to me by Rashad Ullah.

11
 ‘Sita laughed.’

Example (3a) is a transitive sentence with two arguments, Ram and Sita. Example
(3b) is an intransitive sentence with a single argument, Sita. The transitive subject St
of (3a) and the intransitive subject Si of (3b) are both in the nominative case, which
is unmarked in Bangla. The transitive direct object O of (3b) is in the accusative
case and is marked by the case marker -ke. Thus the language follows a nominative-
accusative case-marking pattern. Furthermore, the verb agrees with the St in (3a) and
the verb agrees with the Si in (3b). Thus verbal agreement also follows a nominative-
accusative pattern.

By contrast, consider these sentences in a related Indo-Aryan language, Hindi:

(4) a. rām-ne cidiyā dekh-ī

ram.m-erg sparrow.f.abs see-perf.f.sg
‘Ram saw a sparrow.’ (Deo and Sharma 2006: 376)

b. rām hãs-e
ram.m.abs laugh-perf.m.sg
‘Ram laughed.’ (Deo and Sharma 2006: 376)

For the transitive sentence in (4a) the case-marking pattern is reversed: there is mark-
ing on the St , Ram, and no marking on the O, cidiyā. This is an ergative-absolutive
pattern. The St is in the ergative case, while the O is in the (unmarked) absolutive
case. Furthermore, the verb agrees with the O, cidiyā. For the intransitive sentence
in (4b), the single argument Si is in the (unmarked) absolutive case, and the verb
agrees with the intransitive subject (Si ).

There are other possible alignment patterns: a neutral alignment is one in

which all three arguments are grouped together such that they are not demarcated
from each other. Conversely, a tripartite alignment is one in which all three pattern
differently such that Si receives absolutive marking, St receives nominative marking,
and O receives ergative marking.

12
 Finally, there are languages in which the subject of an intransitive clause Si is split
in two: in clauses for which the argument is agent-like (Sa ) the argument patterns
with St , and in clauses where the argument is more patient-like (Sp ) the argument
patterns with O. This is the active-inactive alignment pattern.9 These additional
three alignment patterns are schematized in Figure (1.5).

Figure 1.5: Neutral, Tripartite, and Active-Inactive Alignment

This is a basic typology of alignments. In fact, many languages are mixed systems,
employing one pattern in some domains and another pattern in others (a topic which
will be discussed in the next subsection). Depending upon the clause, Nepali case-
marking may follow a Nominative-Accusative, Ergative-Absolutive, Active-Inactive,
or Tripartite alignment. As a general rule, I refer to any morphological form which
uniquely demarcates the transitive subject St as “ergative.”

Furthermore, in the domain of case marking, there is usually only one morpho-

9. Other terms for this alignment pattern are agentive-patientive alignment, stative-active align-
ment and Split-S alignment. A subtype is Fluid-S alignment, in which either case is possible, but
the usage of one or the other has an effect on the semantic interpretation of the clause.

13
logically overt case with an opposition between a morphologically marked form and
a morphologically unmarked form.10 In an accusative language, the O will take a
special (accusative) case marker or inflection while the St and Si retains a default
or zero form. In an ergative language, the ergative St will take a special (ergative)
case marker or inflection while the O and Si retains a default or zero form. There
are different theoretical positions on whether the absolutive and nominative represent
the same abstract case in such languages (as discussed in the Syntax section).

Figure 1.6: Incidence of Ergativity in the World’s Languages (data from WALS online)

The map in Figure (1.6) depicts the geographical distribution of languages with
ergative alignment based on data from the World Atlas of Language Structures
(WALS).11 Ergative languages are marked in red. Ergative alignment is found in
10. Throughout this dissertation, markedness values are color-coded. Red indicates a marked (in
this case morphologically marked) form, and blue indicates an unmarked form. This illustrates that
Neutral, Inactive, Nominative, and Absolutive are typically default, zero forms.

11. The data obtained from WALS online is an aggregate of data from the chapters “Alignment

14
about 35% of the 382 languages sampled, and is particularly concentrated among
the languages of Australia, Papua New Guinea, South Asia, and the Americas. It
is broadly a feature of Indo-Aryan languages of India and the Himalayas, of which
Nepali is a member, and of many of the Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas.

1.3.1 Alignment Splits

Most languages which exhibit ergative alignment do so for only part of the grammar.
They may have ergative alignment in some transitive clauses and accusative alignment
in others. For example, the case morphology may follow an ergative pattern while
verbal cross-reference follows an accusative pattern. Or the case morphology may
follow an ergative pattern for some clauses and an accusative pattern in others.

Alignment splits are typically conditioned by some property of the clause or its
constituents. These are the common sources of alignment splits (Dixon 1994: 70):

(1) Verbal Tense-Aspect-Mode (perfective/imperfective, past/nonpast, affirmative/negative)

(2) Properties of the noun phrase referent (noun/pronoun, person, number, ani-
macy, referentiality, definiteness)

(3) Clausal properties (main/subordinate)

A common locus of the ergative split is based on aspect: ergative morphology is

typically restricted to verbal forms with perfective aspect. This is the quintessential
alignment pattern for many Indo-Aryan languages (Bangla is an exception, being
nominative-accusative throughout). Hindi and Nepali are two languages with align-
of Case Marking in Full Noun Phrases” (Comrie 2013a), “Alignment of Case Marking in Pronouns”
(Comrie 2013b), and “Alignment of Verbal Person Marking” (Siewierska 2013a). I employ a quite
liberal definition of ergativity to include any language with ergative, active, or tripartite case-marking
and any language with ergative, split, active, or hierarchical (inverse) verbal agreement, hence,
any form of differential subject marking. While this clearly lumps together disparate grammatical
phenomena, it provides a better visualization of the overall distribution of ergativity than can be
seen from any one variable.

15
ment splits based on perfective aspect. This pattern is demonstrated for Hindi with
the example below:

(5) a. rām-ne cidiyā dekh-ī

ram.m-erg sparrow.f.nom see-perf.f.sg
‘Ram saw a sparrow.’ (Deo and Sharma 2006: 376)

b. sita rām-ko dekh-t-ī h-ai

sita.f.nom ram.m-acc see-impf-f.sg be-pres.3.sg
‘Sita sees Ram.’ (Deo and Sharma 2006: 376)

In (5a), the verb form is perfective and agrees with the object. There is ergative case-
marking (-ne) on the subject of the sentence, Ram. This is an ergative alignment
pattern. In imperfective clauses like (5b), the alignment is nominative-accusative.
The verb form is imperfective and agrees with the subject. There is accusative case-
marking (-ko) on the object of the sentence, Ram. This is an accusative alignment
pattern.

This is the “classic split” of modern Indo-Aryan languages: “quasi-ergative case-

marking and agreement in the Perfective only, vs. nominative-accusative patterns
in non-Perfective tenses”(Masica 1993: 342). Figure (1.7) is a schematization of the
domain of ergativity in a language with such a split.

The term “alignment split” implies that ergative morphology and accusative mor-
phology are never found in the same clause: we should only find ergative case in
perfective (transitive) clauses and we should only find accusative case in imperfective
(transitive) clauses (and nominative case elsewhere). In fact, accusative morphology
may have independent conditions on emergence. Silverstein (1976: 123) refers to this
as a distinction between global splits, in which ergative case is affected by the pres-
ence or absence of accusative case (or vice versa), and local splits, in which ergative
case and accusative case are independently conditioned.

16
Figure 1.7: Ergative Case-Marking in a Language with a Perfective/Imperfective Split

1.4 Relevant Features of Nepali Grammar

This section is a description of Nepali nominal case morphology and verbal mor-
phology. The major reference works consulted here include Grierson (1904a), Turner
(1931), Acharya (1991), Masica (1993), and Schmidt (1993). Nepali is a non-tonal,
head-final language with default SOV word order. Clause constituents are marked
with case postpositions. Verbs are marked for tense-aspect-mood through successive
suffixes, and there is consistent verbal cross-reference with the St or Si argument in
all tenses; verbal affixation marks person, number, gender, and honorificity. Verbal
crossreference follows a straightforwardly nominative-accusative alignment, but there
is a split accusative-ergative patterning in the expression of the St /Si (as either nom
or erg) and of the O (as either nom or acc).

17
1.4.1 Nominal Morphology and Case

Nouns are optionally marked for plurality with the suffix -haru. Gender in modern
Nepali is restricted to a masculine/feminine distinction on a small set of animate
nouns, as in choro/chori ‘son/daughter.’12

Case is expressed on common nouns by postpositions which do not inflect for

person, number, or gender (Figure 1.8).13 The nominative case is the unmarked form.
Many of the personal pronouns have suppletive forms, particularly in the ergative and
genitive (Figure 1.9).14

Case Form
Nominative -∅
Accusative -lāi
Dative -lāi
Ergative -le
Instrumental -le
Genitive -ko
Locative -mā
Ablative -bāṭa

Figure 1.8: Nepali Case Marking on Common Nouns

There is a syncretism between the ergative and instrumental case markers, as well
as a syncretism between the accusative and dative.

12. Because the default case is masculine and feminine morphology is the marked case, I will not
gloss masculine gender unless it is relevant to the discussion.

13. The exception to this rule is the genitive, which has a plural/oblique form kā and a singular
feminine form -ki.

14. Here I have included only the mid-grade honorific forms of the 2nd and 3rd personal pronouns
for simplicity. Grammars variously ascribe three to five levels of honorificity. Acharya (1991) has
three levels: Low Grade Honorific: (2nd tã, 3rd tyo/u); Mid Grade Honorific (2nd timī, 3rd unī );
High Grade Honorific (2nd tapāĩ, 3rd wahā~). There are also particular forms for addressing the royal
family.

18
 Nominative Ergative Accusative Genitive
1st SG ma maile ma-lāi mero
1st PL hāmi hāmi-le hāmi-lāi hāmro
2nd SG mid timī timī-le timī-lāi timro
2nd PL mid timī-haru timī-haru-le timī-haru-lāi timī-haru-ko
3rd SG mid u us-le us-lāi us-ko
3rd PL mid unī-haru unī-haru-le unī-haru-lāi unī-haru-ko

Figure 1.9: Nepali Case Postpositions

The -le postposition

As a postposition on core arguments of the clause, -le marks ergative case. It is

obligatory in perfective transitive clauses like (6). It varies with the nominative in
imperfective transitive clauses (7), as well as in certain clauses which are arguably
intransitive like (8).15

(6) bhāguta dekh-era sāno kheta-le sam-āu-na khoj-yo

frog see-conj little boy-erg catch-caus-inf try-perf.3.sg
‘Seeing the frog, the little boy tried to catch it.’ [AG]

(7) mero bahini/bahini-le kitāb lekh-chin.

my little.sister/little.sister-(erg) book write-pres.3.f.sg
‘My little sister writes books/ is writing a book / will write a book.’ [AG]

(8) kukur-haru/kukur-haru-le rāti bhak-tyo

dog-pl/dog-pl-(erg) night bark-hab.3.sg
‘Dogs would bark at night.’ [TD]

It is homophonous with the instrumental case marker -le, which attaches to adjunct
noun phrases which bring about effect the event described in the clause. This instru-
mental usage may co-occur in a clause with an ergative marker, as in the example
below:

(9) maile camcā-le bhāt khā-ẽ

I.obl-erg spoon-instr rice eat-perf.1.sg
15. I follow the convention of writing out both forms separated by a slash if variability is present.
In some cases I emphasize the lack of variation by marking a form as ungrammatical or infelicitous.
This convention makes it visually easier to represent alternations that involve oblique forms.

19
 ‘I ate rice with a spoon.’ [TD]

The -le postposition may also mark verbs that are either nonfinite or on verbs
marked with the past participle -eko. These are subordinate clauses which give reasons
or causes. I follow Butt and Poudel (2007) in considering these to be a form of
instrumental marking.

(10) a. pāhunā āu-na-le ma timro bihā-mā jā-na

guests come-inf-instr I your wedding-loc go-inf
pā-ina
get-perf.1.sg.neg
‘Because of guests’ coming, I could not go to your wedding.’ (Butt and
Poudel 2007: 10)

b. khās bhan-na-le ma-lāi thāhā chaina

truly speak-inf-instr I-obj knowledge cop-3.sg.neg
‘Truthfully, I don’t know.’

The -le postposition alternates with the accusative in certain modal constructions,
particularly those that use the verb pārnu (“fall”/“need”):

(11) a. rām-lāi ā~p khā-nu par-cha

ram-acc mango eat-inf need-pres.3.sg
‘Ram needs to eat mangoes.’ [AG]

b. rām-le ãap khā-nu par-cha

ram-erg mango eat-inf need-pres.3.sg
‘Ram likes to eat mangoes.’ [AG]

The -lāi postposition

The -lāi postposition marks the direct object of a transitive verb. It varies with
nominative marking.

(12) a. Bibek-le birālo-(lāi) dekh-yo

Bibek-erg cat-(obj) see-past.3.sg
‘Bibek saw a cat.’ [TD]

20
 Imperfective Forms
simple present (pres) -cha
√
present continuous (cont) -dai-cha
√
past habitual (pst.hab) -thyo
√
archaic present (arch.pres) -dā-cha
√
definite future (def.fut) -ne cha
√
hypothetical future (hyp.fut) -lā
√
progressive (prog) -i-rah-eko cha
√
optative (opt) -os
√
Perfective Forms
perfective (perf) -yo
√
present perfect (pres.perf) -eko cha
√
past perfect (pst.perf) -eko thyo
√
present mirative (pres.mir) -e-cha
√
past mirative (pst.mir) -e-thyo
√

Figure 1.10: Nepali Verb Forms

In a ditransitive verb with a direct object and an indirect object, the direct object is
unmarked and the indirect object is obligatorily marked with -lāi, which I consider
to be an expression of dative case.

(13) Bibek-le Timila-lāi phul di-yo

Bibek-erg Timila-dat flower give-past.3.sg
‘Bibek gave Timila a flower.’ (indirect object) [TD]

1.4.2 Verbal Morphology

Tense and aspect information and nominal cross-reference is marked via successive
suffixes on the Nepali verb root. There are inflectional tenses, and there are pe-
riphrastic tenses which consist of a verb root marked with a participle and followed
by a copula. Every tense has separate affirmative and negative declensions.

Verbal cross-reference is always with the St or Si , whether it is marked in the

ergative or the nominative. Verbs agree in person, number, gender, and honorificity,
although number and gender features are often omitted.

Figure (1.10) lists the verb forms in third person mid-honorific singular form.

21
The forms can be broadly grouped together into perfective and imperfective based
on semantic and morphological grounds. The Perfective forms share a number of
properties. They denote perfective aspect and typically refer to events in the past.
Many are periphrastic, and they all contain a reflex of the Sanskrit yā-construction
(realized as -yo/-e- in Nepali). And for all these forms the ergative case is oblig-
atory in the transitive clauses.

The imperfective tenses do not contain reflexes of the Sanskrit -yā construction
(with the exception of the progressive). The Simple Present has pronominal affix
markers which are similar in form to the present tense copula but have different in-
flections. The past habitual has a pronominal affix markers which are similar in form
to the past tense copula. Other tenses include aspectual markers that attach to the
verb root or periphrastic constructions. For all clauses in these tenses ergative case
is variable in transitive clauses.

Copular Clauses

Nepali has two copulas in the present tense: ho and cha. Grammars of Nepali tend to
characterize ho and cha as separate present-tense instantiations of the verb hunu ‘to
be’, with ho described as ‘identificational’ and cha as ‘existential’ (Schmidt (1993),
Acharya (1991: 154-155)). Butt and Poudel (2007) characterize ho as an individual-
level copula and cha as a stage-level copula. I discuss this distinction in greater
detail in section 4.1.3. The verb forms of the copular hunu are summarized in Figure
(1.11) in third person mid-honorific singular form.

Many of the verb forms in the previous subsection historically derive from pe-
riphrastic constructions consisting of a verb root or deverbal adjective and a copula.
Those forms which end with a full copula (definite future, progressive, present perfect,
past perfect) are periphrastic in the modern language. Either cha or ho may be used,

22
 Form Gloss
hunu nonfinite ‘to be’
cha copula 1 ‘is’
ho copula 2 ‘is’
thiyo past (imperfective) ‘was’
bhayo perfective ‘became’
huncha future ‘will be’/‘tends to be’

Figure 1.11: Nepali Copulas

as well as past and future tense forms. Other forms are historically derived from pe-
riphrastic constructions with copulas (simple present, past habitual, archaic present,
present and past mirative) but are inflectional suffixes in the modern language.16

1.5 Ergativity in Nepali

Nepali has an ergative pattern that is unique among Indo-Aryan languages. Ver-
bal morphology always references the subject (St or Si ), whether the subject is case
marked or not. So in this domain the alignment is straightforwardly nominative-
accusative. In the domain of nominal morphology, the pattern is more complex.
Figure (1.5) is a visualization of the domains of ergative marking based on properties
of the verb. It is derived from the conclusions of Li (2007). Ergative marking on
the St is required in perfective transitive clauses and variable in imperfective transi-
tive clauses. In the intransitive domain, there is a split between agent-like subjects
(Unergatives) and patient-like subjects (Unaccusatives). Ergative marking is disal-
lowed on the Si of unaccusative intransitives. For unergative intransitives, the pattern
depends upon the lexical semantics of the particular verb. Depending upon the verb,
all three patterns are possible: ergative marking may be obligatory, disallowed, or

16. For example, the forms with suffixes have a separate negative paradigm: compare cha ‘is’
and chaina ‘isn’t’; gar-eko cha ‘has done’ and gar-eko chaina ‘hasn’t done’; but gar-cha ‘does’ and
gar-daina ‘does not do’.

23
variable.17

Figure 1.12: Ergative marking in Nepali (according to Li 2007)

An early account of the variable Nepali pattern comes from George Grierson’s
monumental Linguistic Survey of India (Grierson 1904a). This was a comprehensive
survey of the languages of India undertaken by Grierson on behalf of the Government
of India, a thirty-year project which documented 364 languages and dialects. On
the unusual usage of the ergative (which he refers to as the Agent case), Grierson
considers its unusual character to derive from contact with its neighbors:

In the fact that the verb is not changed by the object, we see the influence
of Tibeto-Burman languages. The influence is still plainer in the colloquial
language, which in this respect differs markedly from the literary style. In
the colloquial language, the agent case may optionally be employed before
any tense of a transitive verb whether derived from the past participle
17. The conclusion I reach in section 4.1.2 is simpler: I argue that ergative marking is com-
pletely disallowed in all intransitive clauses. I also discuss the overall variability ergative marking
in subordinate clauses in section 4.1.1 and in copular clauses in 4.1.3.

24
 or not, in fact it is more customary to employ it than to employ the
nominative. (Grierson 1904a: 26)

Grierson, who notes that the usage is “emphatic,” is describing variable ergative
marking in Nepali, which is not generally a property of Indo-Aryan languages. Lan-
guages of this type are not very widespread, consisting of 10% of the morphologically
ergative languages in McGregor (2010)’s language survey, and about 3% of all lan-
guages in Fauconnier (2011)’s language sample. But they are particularly common
in the Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayan region (McGregor 2010, Chelliah
et al. 2011). Language contact between Nepali and Newari in particular is implicated
in morphological changes by Bendix (1974), Genetti (1994), and Verbeke (2011).18

1.5.1 The development of Ergativity in Indo-Aryan

The ergative pattern in Nepali fits into the broader milieu of ergative systems in
the Indo-Aryan languages, which are inherited from ergative alignment shift that
occurred in the history of the family. The most common historical explanation for
the emergence of split-ergativity is that it arose from the reanalysis of a deverbal
passive-like periphrastic construction in Sanskrit into a general perfective form. This
construction was not the main form of producing passive constructions in Sanskrit,
but the form was essentially a passive periphrastic construction with a clear perfective
sense (Anderson 1977: 177). As in an ergative clause, the agreement was with the O
and the St was marked by additional morphology.
During the development of the Old Indo-Aryan languages into the Middle Indo-
Aryan languages, much of the tense and case morphology eroded or fell out of use
completely. In Hindi and Nepali, the formerly inflected instrumental case collapsed
into other cases to form a general oblique case, which has almost completely eroded
18. Meakins (2009) provides a particular example of shift in ergative alignment due to language
contact.

25
into the nominative in modern Nepali. Older tenses fell out of use, such that the
constructed form above became the only way to express perfective aspect in MIA. The
periphrastic construction was reanalyzed as an active, perfective tense with ergative
morphology.

The result of this reanalysis was that perfectives developed ergative morphology.
For many of the modern Indo-Aryan languages there is a perfective split in both
verbal agreement and nominal morphology.19 There have been various developments
across the Indo-Aryan family that temper with this system, either with the agreement
pattern or the form of the ergative (Masica 1993: 341-345).

In Nepali, Asamiya, Shina and Bangla there was a shift from object agreement to
subject agreement in the perfective domain. In Bangla, the ergative case marking has
completely eroded and there is no ergative case-marking at all. Indo-Aryan languages
like Kashmiri retain vestiges of the old Sanskrit form which inflects for gender and
number. Other languages like Asamiya retain a phonological descendent of the marker
(-e) that does not inflect for gender and number. Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, and Nepali
all reinforced the ergative case with a non-inflectional instrumental postposition (ne
in Hindi, Punjabi, and Marathi, and le in Nepali). For Marathi and Punjabi, the
ergative and nominative have collapsed into the same form for first and second person
pronominal forms (Deo and Sharma 2006).

Wallace (1982, 1985) chronicles the development of ergative alignment in Nepali

over multiple periods of its history. Ergative marking was reintroduced into the
language in two waves as new verb forms were created from participials (hence the
similar form of the present mirative and present perfective forms). However, Poudel

19. Butt (2001) provides an alternative viewpoint to this sequence of events, which is that OIA
and its modern descendants “all used (and continue to use) a complex system of case marking that
includes non-nominative marking on subjects and case alternations to express consistent semantic
differences” (Butt 2001: 106). Under this view, there was never a grand structural ergative realign-
ment throughout the language, because case marking and verb agreement alternations have always
been used to impart particular semantic meanings like agentivity.

26
(2008) disputes certain aspects of this analysis, particularly in assigning earlier dates
to the origin of Nepali and the creation of case marking postpositions.
The historical developments that led to the modern-day Nepali are significant
because they created grammatical associations between particular verb forms and
ergative case marking. These associations represent the categorical boundaries of
obligatory/disallowed marking that delimit regions of variable marking. However,
the primary focus of this investigation will be on the synchronic system. I now turn
to a discussion of the methodologies I employ in data collection.

27
Chapter 2

Methodologies

The factors which condition the expression of case in Nepali are varied and correlate
with subtle properties of the discourse. This requires approaching the problem of
data collection from multiple angles. The observations and conclusions of this study
are based upon four converging lines of inquiry. The first line of inquiry consists of
descriptive and theoretical accounts of ergative patterning in the literature. This
includes descriptions of the Nepali language in grammars and dictionaries of Nepali
(in English and Nepali), linguistic descriptions of the Nepali ergative system, and
theoretical literature on split-ergativity, differential and optional case marking, se-
mantic markedness, transitivity, and discourse prominence. In the Theories chapter
I summarize these proposals and discuss their advantages and deficiencies. Secondly,
I conducted elicitation sessions with native speakers of Nepali. From 2013 to 2019
I worked with a total of thirteen speakers, collecting judgments on various aspects of
the Nepali case system. In the Elicitation section below I go into more detail about
the process and discuss the general elicitation procedure I developed. Third, I con-
ducted a grammaticality judgment survey at Tribhuvan University at Kirtipur
in Kathmandu, Nepal. The goal of this survey was to explore a variety of topics
that had arisen from elicitation sessions, as described in the Survey section. Finally,

28
I annotated and analyzed a sample of the Nepali National Spoken Corpus (NNSP)
which was produced by Nelralec in 2006. I annotated 67 minutes of spoken Nepali,
focusing on the realization of core arguments in various clause types. I discuss this
procedure in detail in the Corpus section. The results of this research are represented
throughout the Observations chapter.

It may not be immediately obvious why it is necessary to examine this problem

from multiple perspectives simultaneously. This multifaceted research plan arose or-
ganically from difficulties I encountered studying the problem. When I began working
with consultants, I quickly discovered that judgments were subtle and heavily depen-
dent upon the discourse context. In many specific instances consultants could not
detect any difference of meaning between a minimal pair, and judgments varied both
from speaker to speaker and from session to session.

I developed the survey in order to see whether the intuitions expressed by consul-
tants in elicitation sessions bear out in the judgments of other Nepali speakers. This
also allowed me to better control the discourse context. The judgments consisted
of question-answer pairs, which allowed for the question under discussion to be ex-
plicit. While the survey provided useful data (particularly about judgments relating
to semantic factors), it was less successful in determining judgments relating to more
subtle pragmatic factors.

On the suggestion of survey respondents and linguists at Tribhuvan University, I

began an analysis of naturally-occurring speech to examine the judgments and intu-
itions shared by elicitation consultants and survey respondents. This allowed me to
make quantitative claims about the expression of case marking in particular gram-
matical and semantic contexts. Corpus analysis also fed directly into the elicitation
research. I examined particular discourses with consultants and discussed intuitions
about the expression of case in particular contexts. In this way the results obtained
from the corpus analysis, survey results, and elicitation sessions informed each other

29
and allowed for a more precise understanding of case marking within a broad range
of grammatical and discourse contexts.

2.1 The Necessity of a Multifaceted Approach

Other researchers of pragmatically-conditioned ergativity have noted the difficulty

of collecting data through speaker elicitation. For example, Holisky (1987) writes
the following in her analysis of Tsova-Tush: “As I worked with my consultant, verbs
moved back and forth from group to group; the lists could not be verified completely,
because they kept changing. Had I had a different consultant, asked about these
words on a different day or in a different way, when she was in a different frame of
mind, the lists would be somewhat different” (Holisky 1987: 114).

In discussing ergative/nominative alternations in Nepali, Butt and Poudel (2007)

write that when “questioned about the semantic difference between minimal pairs as
in (9), native speakers of Nepali tend to look at you quite helplessly - a difference is
felt, but what that difference is cannot usually be articulated” (Butt and Poudel 2007:
4). I suspect that many native English speakers will exhibit a fair approximation
of that same feeling of helplessness when questioned about the meaning difference
involved with a dative shift alternation:

(14) a. I threw Shauna the ball.

b. I threw the ball to Shauna.

Dative shift alternations and Nepali ergative/nominative alternations share some

similarities. They both consist of variant strategies of argument realization that
correlate with a host of subtle pragmatic and semantic effects which present challenges
for data collection and generalization (cf. Green 1974, Krifka 1999, Bresnan et al.
2007).

30
 Pragmatically-conditioned ergativity is unusual in the Indo-Aryan family, for
which the verb form and properties of the argument will categorically determine the
morphological expression of case.1 But it is common enough in the Tibeto-Burman
languages of the Himalayas. In their introduction to a collection of essays on Op-
tional Ergative Marking in Tibeto-Burman, Chelliah et al. (2011) write that “native
speakers cannot easily explain the use of the agentive marker because of the number
of related and nuanced implications its use has” (Chelliah et al. 2011: 6). This senti-
ment is echoed by DeLancey (2011) and Lidz et al. (2011) in the same volume. They
both note that direct elicitation has led to misinterpretations of the ergative pattern,
partly because of influence from the contact language. Based on these elicitation
results, researchers typically give description of the language which seem straightfor-
wardly split-ergative with a split conditioned by perfective aspect. But in fact this is
not how people use these markers when speaking.

Chelliah et al. (2011) and Willis et al. (2011) argue that the best way to study
Optional Ergative Marking is to combine direct elicitation with analysis of natural
speech (e.g. through participant observation) and grammaticality judgments. Chel-
liah et al. (2011) write that the “researcher must elicit these constructions indirectly
through native speaker explanations of culturally-bound situations and relationships”
(Chelliah et al. 2011: 6).

I have attempted to follow this advice. In the next subsections I describe the
approaches I took to these three methodologies in detail, and then I compare the
advantages and limitations of each.

1. There are some exceptions, such as the nominative/ergative alternations in certain intransitive
verbs of Hindi (discussed in the Theories section).

31
2.2 Elicitations

I worked with thirteen total Nepali speakers from 2013 to 2019. I spent an extended
period of time with eight of these speakers: Anobha Gurung, Timila Dhakhwa, Rijan
Maharjan, Biplob Acharya, Sajju Tamang, Geeta Manandhar, Bibek Basnet, and
Sushant Banjara. All of these speakers were born and raised in Nepal and speak
it natively, although many of them currently live in the United States. Most of
the speakers who were born and raised in Kathmandu Valley (Province 3), but I
interviewed speakers from other regions to get a basic understanding of the way that
these patterns may vary geographically. Figure (2.1) tabulates the demographic data
for every consultant. Throughout this dissertation, I will refer to these consultants
by their initials given in this chart.

Name ID Sex Birth Region Residence Native Language Parents’ L1

Biplob Acharya BA Male Province 3 Province 3 Nepali Nepali
Sushant Banjara SB Male Province 1 USA Nepali Nepali
Bibek Basnet BB Male Province 1 USA Nepali Nepali
Timila Dhakhwa TD Female Province 3 USA Nepali Nepali, Newari
Anobha Gurung AG Female Province 3 USA Nepali Gurung, Nepali
Min Gurung MG Male Gandaki Gandaki Gurung, Nepali Gurung
Prashanta Kharel PK Male Province 3 USA Nepali Nepali, Newari
Rijan Maharjan RM Male Province 3 USA Nepali, Newari Nepali, Newari
Geeta Manandhar GM Female Province 3 Province 3 Nepali, Newari Newari
Sabin Pyakurel SP Male Province 3 Province 3 Nepali Nepali
Uddhab Pyakurel UP Male Province 3 Province 3 Nepali Nepali
Kamal Sharma KS Male Province 1 USA Nepali Nepali
Sajju Tamang ST Female Province 3 Province 3 Nepali Nepali

Figure 2.1: Nepali-speaking Elicitation Consultants

I began working with Anobha Gurung and Prashanta Tamang while they were
graduate students at Yale University, initially for an Indo-Aryan linguistics seminar
taught by Ashwini Deo in the Fall of 2013 and with a directed independent study
on Nepali in the Spring of 2014. I subsequently applied to the Yale DILS (Directed
Independent Language Study) program, and worked with Yale graduate students
Timila Dhakhwa (Spring of 2015, on Nepali) and Rijan Maharjan (Fall of 2015, on
Nepali and Patan dialect Newari). I began meeting with another Yale graduate

32
student, Bibek Basnet, beginning in the Fall of 2017. I applied for another DILS
specifically to work on a corpus analysis in Fall 2018. For this project I worked with
another Yale graduate student, Sushant Banjara.

These interviews were supplemented by two field visits to Kathmandu, in 2014

and 2016. In July and August of 2014, I did fieldwork with Dr. Ashwini Deo in India.
During the latter part of August, I traveled to Nepal to Lalitpur District where I had
taught as a Fulbright scholar in 2010-2011, and spoke with Uddhab Pyakurel and
Sabin Pyakurel. From June to September of 2016, I did fieldwork in Kathmandu,
which included interviews with two graduate students, Biplob Acharya and Sajju
Tamang, and targeted Nepali and Kathmandu dialect Newari tutoring from Geeta
Manandhar. I also discussed my research project with Dr. Madhav Pokharel and
Dr. Dan Raj Regmi at Tribhuvan University and Dr. Tikaram Poudel at Kathmandu
University.

2.2.1 Procedure

For a typical elicitation session, I would begin with a list of hypotheses about the
effect of the ergative marker in a particular context. For each hypothesis, I would
devise a minimal pair of sentences with the ergative and without. I would describe
a general situation in which the sentence might be uttered by the speaker, and then
I would ask the speaker to respond to the situation in Nepali. I would record the
speaker’s response. I would ask whether the other forms were grammatically possible,
the extent to which they sounded awkward in this context, and how the form might
be better in a different context.

For example, the simple present verb form (pres) may be used to describe events
which are habitual, ongoing, or future-oriented. I was interested in whether the
ergative form of the subject would be preferred or dispreferred with future-oriented
readings of the simple present verb form. I presented the following context to PK: he

33
and I are both eating at a cafe and I accidentally knock my drink onto the floor. I
start to clean up the spill myself, but the waiter comes by with a towel and says he’ll
take care of it. I asked PK what specifically the waiter would be likely to say, and he
responded with (15a):

(15) a. ma puc-chu !
I clean-pres.3.sg !
“I’ll clean (it)!” [PK]

b. maile puc-chu !
I.erg clean-pres.3.sg !
“I’ll clean (it)!” [PK]

PK noted that (15b), on the other hand, sounded unnatural to him in that situ-
ation. I asked about other ways that that the sentiment might be expressed and PK
offered a sentence with the hypothetical future verb form: maile pucchãula! “I shall
clean it’!’ He preferred the ergative over the nominative with the hypothetical future
in this case. However, he also noted that the hypothetical future form sounds stilted
in the precise situation described, in which the waiter is speaking quickly but politely
to stop me from getting my hands dirty.
Compare this method to a direct elicitation method in which the researcher sim-
ply requests a Nepali translation of the English sentence “I will clean it.” Without
a context, there are several ways to describe a future-oriented event and multiple
possible verb forms in Nepali that can all express the English sentence in a particular
context. The response may contain an overt subject or it may be elided. If the subject
is overt, the researcher might record an ergative marker on the subject but does not
know whether it is obligatory or varies with the nominative.
Alternatively, we can compare this to a method in which the researcher presents
two minimal pairs, ma pucchu and maile pucchu, and asks which one sounds more
natural. Here we might learn that the ergative varies with the nominative for most
speakers. The most common response I received in comparing minimal paired sen-

34
tences was “They both are correct.” But divorced from a particular context it is
impossible to tell what, if anything, is contributed by the ergative.

Furthermore, giving the speaker the opportunity to think about and describe the
implications of using one form over another provides valuable qualitative data. Speak-
ers are much more likely to have an opinion about the difference in meaning when
given a particular context. And while speakers do not have a perfect knowledge of
their own grammar and may sometimes make incorrect assumptions, their intuitions
are a crucial source of insights that can be tested in later elicitation sessions.

When a statement is a response to a direct question, many speakers expressed

the intuition that the pattern of case marking in the response follows the question:
an ergative in the question means an ergative in the answer. This led me to frame
the topic of a particular statement in terms of a question under discussion, which
informed my choice of discourse model (as discussed in the Theories chapter in the
section on Discourse Prominence).

With four consultants (AG, UP, SP, and GM), I also elicited narratives using sto-
ryboards. These are picture books that consultants are asked to narrate in their own
words (Burton and Matthewson 2015). For storyboards I used A Boy, a Dog, and
a Frog (Mayer 2003) and the Woodchopper narrative from Totem Field Storyboards
(TFS Working Group 2011). While I found this technique useful for eliciting natu-
ralistic data and example contexts, I found narratives to be less useful as a source of
data than the recorded conversations from the NNSP. This is largely because speak-
ers tend to use the past tense to narrate the events of the story, in which the most
common verb forms were perfective and ergative marking is obligatory.

2.2.2 Advantages and Limitations of Elicitation

The elicitation of grammaticality judgments allows the researcher to target specific

hypotheses. It also gives the researcher the greatest amount of control in manipulating

35
discourse context by describing the scene or setting up an explicit question under
discussion. The one-on-one approach is ideal for developing new hypotheses, because
conversation about the nuances of meaning in a particular context naturally leads to
new insights and intuitions from the consultant. Grammaticality judgments are also
a source of negative data, i.e., ungrammatical utterances, which cannot be found by
restricting data collection to naturally-occurring speech.

However, working with a small number of consultants makes it less possible to un-
cover patterns of geographic and/or social variation. This is particularly problematic
for elicitation of pragmatic phenomena, in which speakers may already have difficulty
judging differences in meaning that do not necessarily correlate with grammatical-
ity but rather with strategies of information packaging. My consultants are mostly
university-educated and under the age of thirty, because I worked extensively with
graduate students at Yale University, and this may introduce a bias in the results
(I discuss this in the final section of this chapter). Secondly, there is the question
of whether elicitation judgments accurately represent the way speakers use language
in practice. Elicitation must be supplemented with analysis of naturally-occurring
speech and judgments should be corroborated by looking at a wider pool of speakers.

2.3 Grammaticality Judgment Survey

During the summer of 2016, I had the opportunity to conduct research on Nepali
and Newari in Kathmandu, Nepal. The United States Educational Foundation Nepal
(USEF-Nepal) connected me with two student researchers (BA and SJ) who were
tremendously helpful to my research. In addition to providing me with their own
judgments, they assisted me in developing, translating, and disseminating a gram-
maticality judgment survey to students at the Department of Education at Tribhuvan
University in Kirtipur.

36
 This Kathmandu Survey was intended as a pilot survey to explore the expression
of ergativity in the imperfective domain of Nepali. The survey consisted of 58 items
presented in written Nepali. Respondents were prompted to judge the grammaticality
of a statement along a five-point Likert scale. This methodology and design was
inspired by Meyerhoff (2008)’s usage of grammaticality judgment surveys in the field.
Respondents were given the following instructions:

“नेपालीहफৄ आफ्नो दैिनक जीवन मा कसरी बोल्छन भनेर हािमले यो सवेर्क्षण गरदैछफ৒।
तपाईहं फৄले यहाँ िदएको नम्बरहफৄ लाई एक दे ख पाँच सम्म कुनै एउटा वाक्य मा ‘tick’
लगाउनु होला । ‘५’भनेको तपाई ं आफैले बोलने गनुर्भएको व यो शब्दहफৄ अफৄ कसै बाट
सुनु भएको ।‘१’भनेको तपाईल
ं े यो शब्द आफ्नो दैिनक जीवन मा किहले सुफরु भएको छै न
। हामी व्याकरण शब्दमा चािहं केिह फৄिच राख्दैनफ৒ तर के हामीले बोलेको कुरा स्वाभािवक
सुिनन्छ ?”

“We are conducting this survey on how Nepalis speak in their daily lives.
Please tick one of the numbers between one and five on each question.
‘5’ means that you use sentences like this and have heard them spoken
by others. ‘1’ means that you have never heard a sentence like this in
your daily life. We are not looking for what is grammatically correct but
rather what sounds natural.”

Each item consisted of question-answer pairs, for which a question is followed by two
possible responses that differ only in whether the subject is nominative or ergative.
The overt question allowed there to be some control over the context of utterance so
that statements are not simply presented in isolation. Figure (2.2) depicts Item C3
as it appeared on the Survey and Figure (2.3) is an English translation of this item.

The survey consisted of eleven sections, each of which was designed to test a particu-
lar theory about ergative marking. These theories will be described in greater detail

37
 Figure 2.2: Kathmandu Survey: Item C3

Figure 2.3: Kathmandu Survey: Item C3 (English Translation)

in the Theory section.

A: Inanimate Subjects - The responses in this section consisted of transitive im-

perfective clauses in which the St has inanimate reference. The prediction is that the
nominative form should be judged ungrammatical.

B: Focus - Here the responses consisted of transitive imperfective clauses in which

either the subject or object was focalized in the given the context, examining the
extent to which the ergative form is preferred when the subject is focalized.

C: Individual-Level Predication - This section consisted of six items which were

paired. Between a pair, the questions differed but the responses were the same. The
questions either set up a context in which the response has a stage-level or individual-
level interpretation.

D: Elided Objects - In this section the object was elided in each response to exam-
ine the argument that ergative marking should be preferred in such cases.

38
E: Aboutness - To examine whether ergative marking must be associated with top-
icality, the questions in this section were all of the type “What about X?”

F: Unergative Intransitives - The responses in this section were unergative in-

transitive clauses for which ergative marking is predicted to occur.

G: Generic Readings - The responses in this section consisted of generic statements

about kinds. The prediction is that the ergative is preferred.

H: Sets - In this section the subject referents were picked out of a set of possible
entities introduced by the question, either through quantificational determiners or
definite descriptions. I expected ergative marking to be preferred here.

I: Thetic/Categorical Propositions - This section consisted of six items which

were paired. Between a pair, the questions differed but the responses were the same.
The questions either set up a context in which the response has a thetic or categorical
interpretation.

J: Copulas - The responses in this section were copular clauses, in which ergative
marking is predicted to be disallowed.

K: Unaccusative Intransitives - The responses in this section were unaccusative

intransitive clauses, in which ergative marking is predicted to be disallowed.

Each section contained five or six items each (C and I, which consisted of double
question pairs, had six items each). The order of item presentation was made in the

39
following way: I created two survey forms with different orderings, and gave half the
respondents one survey form and the other half the other.

For each survey form, the order of the response presented as (a) or (b) was random-
ized for each item (that is, whether the ergative or nominative form was presented
first in a particular item). The items themselves were also presented in a pseudo-
random order: I split the survey into five trials, putting one item from each section
A-K into each trial, and randomizing the order of items within the trial.2

2.3.1 Survey Respondents

I collected 28 responses (17 male, 10 female, ages 20-56) from students and profes-
sors in the Education and Linguistics Departments at Tribhuvan University in Kath-
mandu. The survey forms requested information on birth district, current district of
residence, age, sex, languages the respondent speaks, and languages the respondents’
parents speak. Figure (2.4) tabulates this data for each respondent.

I recorded the responses for each question into an R dataframe, and associated
each response with the speaker, trial and survey form, as well as other relevant infor-
mation such as the particular subject type and object type in the question, the verb
form and whether or not honorifics were used. I also recorded notes that were made
by respondents at the end of the survey.

2.3.2 Advantages and Limitations of the Kathmandu Survey

The use of surveys allows the collection of judgments from a larger number of native
speakers, and the results are quantitative so they can be examined for particular cor-
relations. Furthermore, the question-answer methodology gives the researcher some
control over the discourse context, and eliciting judgments for both nominative and
2. Randomization was determined by coin flip due to my limited access to Internet and electricity
at the time.

40
 ID Birth Region Residence Age Sex Languages Parent Languages
1 Province 5 Province 3 26 Male Nepali Nepali
2 Province 3 Province 3 25 Male Nepali Nepali
3 Gandaki Province 3 48 Male Nepali Nepali
4 Gandaki Province 3 33 Female Nepali, English, Hindi Nepali
5 Province 5 Province 3 26 Male Tharu Tharu
6 Gandaki Province 3 28 Female Nepali Nepali
7 Karnali Province 3 45 Male Nepali, English, Hindi Nepali
8 Province 3 Province 3 41 Male Nepali, English Nepali
9 Province 3 Province 3 20 Male Nepali, English Nepali, English
10 Province 3 Province 3 31 Female Nepali, English Nepali
11 Province 3 Province 3 26 Male Nepali, Tamang Nepali, Tamang
12 Province 3 Province 3 24 Female Nepali Nepali
13 Province 3 Province 3 50 Male Nepali Nepali
14 Province 3 Province 3 26 Female Nepali Nepali
15 Province 3 Province 3 56 Male Nepali, Hindi Nepali, Magar
16 Province 3 Province 3 26 Female Nepali Nepali
17 Province 3 Province 3 25 Female Nepali Nepali
18 Province 1 Province 3 46 Male Nepali, English, Nepali, Hindi
Hindi, Dhimal
19 Province 1 Province 3 35 Female Nepali Nepali
20 Province 3 Province 3 49 Male Nepali, English Nepali
21 Province 3 Province 3 25 Male Nepali Nepali
22 Sudurpaschim Province 3 38 Male Baitedeli, Doteli, Nepali Baitedeli, Doteli
23 Province 3 Province 3 27 Female Nepali Nepali
24 Province 3 Province 3 24 Female Nepali Nepali
25 Sudurpaschim Province 3 26 Male Baitadeli, Doteli Baitadeli
26 Province 1 Province 3 53 Male Nepali, Nangali, Hindi Nepali
27 Province 5 Province 3 46 Male Nepali, English Nepali
28 Province 3 Province 3 unknown Female Newari, Nepali Newari, Nepali
Hindi, English

Figure 2.4: Kathmandu Survey Respondent Summary

ergative minimal pairs gives both positive and negative evidence for a correlation. If
both judgments are consistently ranked low, then this can be an indication that there
is a problem with the trial set-up (i.e., grammatical mistakes or unnatural contexts).

This type of survey is helpful for studying semantic phenomena and categorical
distinctions related to the interaction between morphology and case expression. For
example, the judgments were quite distinct in picking out the relationship between
ergative marking and inanimate subjects, copular clauses, and perfective aspect. But
the survey was not ideal for testing pragmatic phenomena like topicality, categorical
propositions, and individual-level predicates. The results here were fairly inconclusive.
This is partly because these are not issues of grammaticality but rather of usage;
both the nominative and ergative form are grammatical, but one might be used to
emphasize a particular aspect of discourse. Respondents generally ranked both forms

41
highly. However, this is a significant finding in itself. The lack of a strong correlation
between, topicality, categorical propositions, and individual-level predicates tells us
that the correlations that have been made in the literature are not categorical but
rather represent gradient tendencies.

There is once again a bias toward young university-educated students, and two
respondents (22 and 25) were not native speakers of Nepali but of related Eastern
Pahari languages. There is also more diversity in the birth region of the respondents.
I address dialect diversity in the final subsection of this chapter.

Comments that respondents gave on the survey design, as well as discussions with
linguists at Tribhuvan University (and later with SB), exposed some weaknesses in the
survey design. There were typographical mistakes in the written survey (particularly
in terms of the usage of commas and conventions regarding the spacing of orthographic
words). More importantly, a few respondents suggested that some of the question-
response pairs did not sound natural. This is partly because speakers will tend to
omit the subject if it is heavily topicalized, but I needed to have overt subjects in
each response. There is also an issue of question-response, in which the case form
on the subject of the question tends to be followed in the response. SB also noted
that the purpose of the survey was to examine spoken conventions, but the written
responses did not contain the discourse particles and “ornamentation” that would be
representative of spoken Nepali. Overall the results of the Kathmandu Survey should
be regarded with more skepticism than results obtained from the other methodologies,
but in general they provide extra corroborating evidence in the Observation chapter.

Respondents suggested that I supplement my study with naturally-occurring data

from narratives and conversations to get a better picture of the usage of the ergative.
This led me to include a corpus analysis.

42
2.4 Corpus Analysis

2.4.1 The NNSP Corpus Sample

The Nepali National Spoken Corpus (NNSP) is a collection of recordings and tran-
scriptions of spoken Nepali produced in 2006 by Nelralec (Nepali Language Resources
and Localization for Education and Communication). It is maintained by the Euro-
pean Languages Resources Association (ELRA). The NNSP corpus contains 31 hours
of material from 115 recordings of conversations in a variety of social settings. The
corpus is broadly categorized by seventeen types of conversational activities. These
include shopping and bargaining for clothes, work conversations, radio interviews,
fortune-telling, medical visits, and thesis defenses (Yadava et al. 2008).

The corpus material consists of the audio files from these recordings, transcrip-
tions, and participant metadata. The transcriptions are written phonetically in the
Devanagari script. Each speaker turn is associated with its speaker ID code, and
slashes separate each turn into utterances. Interruptions due to background noises
are marked, as are relevant speaker gestures, and instances of overlapping speech.
Figure (2.5) is a section of the annotation from interview V001001001.

The data for the analysis presented here comes from a sample of the NNSP corpus.
I analyzed four interviews of 67 minutes of total dialogue between fourteen total
speakers representing 2845 separate clauses. I annotated each clause by clause type,
verb type, and properties of the core arguments ( I will discuss that process in detail
in the following subsection).

The four interviews came from the first two activity categories: Shopping and
Discussion. The first interview (V001001001) consisted of a conversation between
a salesperson and two customers bargaining over the price of a sweater in a market
in Kathmandu. The second interview (V001001004) consisted of a conversation
between a salesperson and two customers bargaining over various clothing items in a

43
 Figure 2.5: NNSP Annotation Example (from interview V001001001)

market in Kathmandu. The third interview (V001002003) is a conversation between

two academics discussing language standardization and their opinions on the state of
the modern Nepali language. The fourth interview (V001002005) consisted of an
outdoor conversation between five participants, mostly employees at a wildlife resort
in the Terai region who take tourists on jungle walks to see rhinoceroses and tigers.

I concentrated on the first two activity categories because they consisted of wide-
ranging discussions of ongoing events with fairly little narration of past events. This
is important because I am interested in the way that core arguments are marked
in imperfective clauses, and so the focus of my analysis was on dialogue which dis-
cussed ongoing or future-oriented events. I also wanted to avoid certain categories for
practical reasons: the fortune-telling, radio/television interview, and thesis defense
sections are likely to be somewhat complicated by the presence of stylized registers
and terminology. My initial goal was to completely annotate every interview in these
first two categories (twenty interviews, about 298 minutes total), but due to time

44
constraints the analysis is based upon the four interviews listed here.
Interview ID Age Sex L1 L2 Province District Clauses
V001001001 M1 25 Male Nepali Gandaki Syangja 158
V001001001 M2 20 Male Nepali Province 2 Rautahat 276
V001001001 M3 25 Male Nepali Province 1 Jhapa 212
V001001004 F4 22 Female Nepali English/Hindi Province 3 Kathmandu 260
V001001004 M7 25 Male Nepali (Pacchami) Province 5 Palpa 795
V001001004 M9 21 Male Nepali Province 3 Kathmandu 199
V001002003 M13 65 Male Nepali (Purbali) Gandaki Kaski 189
V001002003 M14 64 Male Dotyali Sudurpaschim Dadheldura 114
V001002005 M7 25 Male Nepali (Pacchami) Province 5 Palpa 795
V001002005 M24 43 Male Nepali English Province 3 Chitwan 373
V001002005 M25 NA Male Nepali NA NA 1
V001002005 M26 38 Male Tharu Nepali Province 3 Chitwan 222
V001002005 M27 NA Male NA NA NA 2

Figure 2.6: Interviewer Data from the NNSP Sample Interviews

The fourteen speakers represented in these interviews were identified by ID num-

ber. The speaker demographics are tabulated in Figure (2.6). I have changed the
stated region of birth to conform to the modern provinces. One speaker (M7) was
present in two interviews (V001001004 and V001002005). Two speakers (M25 and
M27) only contributed a few utterances in the interviews and their demographic in-
formation was not recorded. Two speakers (M7 and M13) listed Nepali as their L1
(listed as mātri bhāshā ‘mother tongue’) and also specified a particular Nepali di-
alect (Purbali and Pacchami). There were two speakers who were not L1 speakers of
Nepali: M14 listed another Eastern Pahari language (Dotyali) and M26 listed Tharu
(a Central Zone Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in the Terai).

2.4.2 Annotation Procedures

I began work on the NNSP sample in the Spring of 2017. I worked primarily with
BB during the Fall of 2017 and Spring of 2018. To get a basic understanding of nom-
inative/ergative alternations in the corpus, I searched through the entire Discussion
section and looked at examples of pronouns with and without ergative marking. I
focused on pronouns, and particularly first and second person pronouns, because they
represent a closed set. Thus it was easier to compare the proportion of nominative

45
and ergative forms.

I would then examine the transcription of the recording in which a particular

utterance takes place, and I would discuss the context of the conversation with BB:
the ten utterances preceding and following the clause of interest. Here is a shortened
example from interview V001002005. In this section of the interview M7 and M24
are discussing their business expenses. Here I have tried to preserve the phonetic
transcription, with shortened forms of words, as they were written in Devanagari:

(16) ~ tapi
a. yā tapĩ-lāi talab-dekhi bāek ta kei
here you.hon you.hon-dat salary-abl apart foc something
di-daina ?
give-pres.3.sg.pl ?
M7: ‘So here they don’t give you anything apart from salary?’

b. m tei ho tyo ta
hm like.that cop that foc
M24: ‘Yes, that’s how it is.’

c. pheri kasto huncha bhane ma jyādā hin-ne kām

again how cop.fut.3.sg say.non.fin I more walk-non.fin work
par-cha hin-ne kām par-epachi kharca jyādā
need-pres.3.sg walk-non.fin work need-after expense more
baḍ-cha ni tyo ta
increase-pres.3.sg prt that foc
M24: ‘So this is how it is. I have to do traveling (lit. walking) work, and
when you have to do traveling work the expenses increase.’

d. kharca baḍ-cha
expense increase-pres.3.sg
M7: ‘Expenses increase.’

e. m jasto etā khā-yo utā khā-yo

hm like this.direction eat-perf.3.sg that.direction eat-perf.3.sg
utā gayo
that.direction go.perf.3.sg
M24: ‘Yes, like: eat here, eat there, go there.’

f. ã
ah

46
 M7: ‘Ah.’

g. tesai-le gar-dā
like.this.emph-erg do-while
M24: ‘That is why.’

h. mero ta yā~ aile kharca hu-ni bhan-eko din-mā tin

my foc here now expense cop.non.fin say-perf day-loc three
se rupyā jati-ko phon gar-chu maile
hundred rupee how.much-gen phone do-pres.1.sg I.erg
M7: ‘My daily expenses here are that I make 300 rupees worth of phone
calls a day.’

i. e
eh
M7: ‘Eh.’

j. mobāil-bāṭa
cell.phone-abl
M24: ‘From my cell phone.’

k. ã
ah
M7: ‘Ah.’

The utterance of interest is (16h), in which the speaker uses the ergative form of
the first person pronoun (maile) with a transitive verb in the simple present tense
(phon garnu ‘to telephone’). In discussing this utterance with BB, I noted that the
subject is postposed and asked whether the nominative form is possible in the given
conversation and whether doing so appears to change the intended meaning. BB
expressed the intuition that using the nominative form would sound a little strange
if the subject is postposed but would be acceptable if the subject is expressed before
the verb. I noted that the reading here is habitual, but in another context the same
clause could express a future-oriented event, and BB noted that both the ergative and
nominative would be acceptable whether the meaning is habitual or future-oriented.
The reading can also be ongoing in the simple present, and BB noted a difference

47
between ma phon garchu ‘I am telephoning.’ and maile phon garchu: “with maile
phon garchu I am thinking kaslāi? (‘whom?’) Who is receiving the impact? With
ma phon garchu this is not the case.”

In the Fall of 2018 and Spring of 2019, I worked primarily with SB to annotate
every utterance in each of the four interviews. First, we listened to the audio record-
ing of the interview. I used R to create a dataframe of utterances by speaker, and
I wrote an R script to convert the Devanagari script into Roman letters for my own
readability. SB and I worked through the transcription to provide English glosses for
each of the utterances. I spoke with SB about various grammatical points that arose
and made notes on relevant topics. Then, I segmented each utterance by clause and
made the following annotations:3

Clause Order: (1, 2, 3, 4...)

Interview Number: V001001001, V001001003, V001002003, or V001002005

Speaker: Speaker order as listed in the transcription (A, B, C, D, E). In my analysis

I associated these codes with the proper Speaker ID.

Utterance (Devanagari): The original text

Utterance (Transliterated): Romanized version of the text

Gloss: Basic English gloss with a focus on conveying the intended meaning intro-
duced by the clause in question. In sentences with multiple embedded clauses I ended

3. For this process I used Microsoft Excel Workbooks which I read into R as a dataframe for
analysis.

48
the gloss with a comma to convey that the clause is part of a whole.

Verb: The full form of the particular verb or verb construction contained in the
clause. These were tagged as OMIT if the verb was clearly elided in a clause with
propositional content, and NA if the given utterance did not contain a verb at all, as
with a phatic expressives of agreement or interjections like ã or e.

Verb Type: TRANS (transitive predicates, including ditransitive predicates), IN-

TRANS (intransitive predicates), and COP (copular clauses of all types).

Verb Tense: Main clause verb forms: I subsumed all present forms under the tag
PRES (pres, cont, arch.pres, as well as present modal forms with incorporated
verbs like -idin-, -ihāl- and -isak-). The other main clause tags were FUT (fut),
HYP (hyp), PAST HAB (pst.hab), PAST (referring only to the past tense copula
thyo), and OPT (opt, which occurred only in copulas). I also tagged imperative verb
forms with IMPER. I subsumed all perfective tenses under the tag PERF (perf,
pres.perf, pst.perf, pres.mir, pst.mir, including perfective modal forms with
incorporated verbs like -idin-, -ihāl- and -isak-, and including perfective nominaliza-
tions with -eko). Subordinate Clause forms: The tag ADV includes verb forms that
end in the adverbial forms (-era, -dā(kheri), -epacchi, -epani, etc.). The tag NONFIN
includes verb forms that end in nonfinite markers (-na, -nu, -ne) and are not part of
a larger verbal construction.

Verb Construction: MODAL (any modal periphrastic constructions: saknu in the

ability construction X-na saknu, parnu in the obligation construction X-nu parnu,
manparnu, lāgnu, and manlāgnu), COND (conditional constructions with bhane, e.g.
X-yo bhane), NOM (any perfective nominalizations with -eko or imperfective nom-

49
inalizations with -ne), PASS (passive constructions). The few instances of complex
combined constructions were doubly tagged as PASS COND, PASS NOM, MODAL
COND, etc. Clauses which did not contain a Verb Construction were tagged NA.

Subject: The Subject Argument (St in a transitive clause, Si in an intransitive clause,

the subject of a copular construction). Tagged OMIT if the subject was elided.

Subject Case: The most frequent cases were ERG (ergative), NOM (nominative),
and NA (if omitted). There were scattered examples of ACC (accusative, if the sub-
ject of a nominalization is the object of a main clause) and CLAUS (if the subject is
a clause).

Subject Type: Pronominals: 1SG (first person singular pronoun), 1PL (first per-
son plural pronoun), 2SG (second person singular pronoun; including both genders
and honorific forms), 2PL (second person plural pronoun; including both genders and
honorific forms), 3SG.ANIM (third person singular pronoun with animate reference;
including both genders and honorific forms), 3.PL.ANIM (third person plural pro-
noun with animate reference; including both genders and honorific forms), 3.SG.INAN
(third person singular pronoun with inanimate reference), 3.PL.INAN (third person
plural pronoun with inanimate reference). This category also marks elided subjects,
for which person, number, and animacy are retrievable from the discourse context.
Nominals: ANIM (animate), and INAN (inanimate).

Object: The O argument of a transitive clause.

Object Case: ACC (accusative), NOM (nominative), NA if omitted (or if the given
clause is not transitive).

50
Object Type: Same categories as in Subject Type.

Other: The goal argument in a ditransitive clause, the dative-marked experiencer of

a copular clause, or an instrumental argument.

Case: DAT (dat -lāi), INSTR (instr -le), NOM (nominative).

Notes: Additional notes about the meaning of particular clauses or grammatical

constructions.

I created some general principles for tagging Nepali speech for an analysis of argument
realization in clauses. Many of these principles had the effect of delimiting what I
consider to be a clause for this analysis. There are several constructions in Nepali
which are technically separate clauses but which cannot contain arguments, so I did
not annotate them.

(1) As stated above, expressive phatics, including expressions of agreement and

approval like hajur and hai, were not considered to be clauses and were marked
NA. This included forms of the ho copula (ho, hoina, huncha) if they were used
to signal approval or agreement rather than as a predication.

(2) I did not consider tag questions to be separate clauses, but rather part of the
main clause. If a verb was simply repeated for emphasis I did not consider it
to be part of a new clause.

(3) I considered honorific verb forms (X-nu huncha, X-nu bhayo) to consist of hon-
orific marking on the verb rather than analyzing them as multi-clausal con-
structions.

51
 (4) I did not consider common fixed expressions (jehos ‘whatever’, lit. ‘whatever
may be’, tyas bhannale ‘by saying that’, etc.) to be separate clauses.

(5) In general I did not consider grammaticalized usages of bhannu ‘to say’ to be
separate clauses. This includes the usage of bhaneko before a topic roughly in
the sense of the English ‘speaking of X’, which I consider to be a discourse
marker. As mentioned above, I consider bhane to be a separate construction
when used as a conditional. I consider kina bhane (‘because’, lit. ‘saying why’)
to be a conjunction.

(6) Clauses in other languages (English, Hindi, and Sanskrit) were put in quotes in
the gloss and left unanalyzed. Nouns in other languages which were otherwise
embedded in Nepali clauses were treated as loanwords.

(7) For copular forms, both cha and ho were tagged PRES, bhayo was tagged PERF,
thyo PAST, hunthyo PAST HAB, hune NONFIN, and there are various ADV
forms like bhaepacchi, hũdo, etc. I considered holā with a single argument to be
OPT, but if incorporated in a regular clause I considered it to be an evidential
marker. While it might be argued that rahecha acts as a mirative copula in
modern Nepali, I considered it to be the intransitive verb rahanu ‘to stay’ in
the mir.pres verb form (the same source as the -iraha- of the prog verb form).

(8) If a subject or object was elided and its referent was known from context, I
made a note of it.

(9) Some verb forms like cāhinu ‘to want’ could be analyzed either as passive forms
or as impersonal verbs which take dative-marked experiencer subjects and have
default singular agreement. I tagged them as passive constructions for simplic-
ity.

(10) The transcription consisted of shortened forms indicative of rapid spoken lan-
guage. Some common examples of this were X-esi for X-epacchi, X-yaa for

52
 X-eko cha, and X-diu for X-idinus. I frequently relied on SB’s interpretation
to distinguish between, for example, present perfect and present mirative verb
forms in rapid speech.

(11) Because of the relatively free word order in Nepali, and because arguments are
frequently elided if coreferential with an argument in another clause, it can
be impossible to tell which clause an overt argument belongs to in a complex
sentence. In these cases I tagged the argument as overt in both positions.

2.4.3 Advantages and Limitations of Corpus Analysis

Corpus analysis examines actual speech rather than relying on the judgments speak-
ers have about their own language. Thus it can provide corroboration of intuitions
obtained from elicitations, and going through recordings with elicitation consultants
is a useful technique for gathering new insights and judgments. Furthermore, it is
a primary source of quantitative data on the realization of case marking in different
grammatical contexts. It allows us to study the frequency of a particular case-marking
pattern in proportion to the overall realization of arguments.

However, analysis of naturally-occurring speech does not give us negative data; if

we do not find a particular construction, it does not tell us that such a construction
cannot exist. Furthermore, annotation is a time-consuming activity, and the gram-
matical contexts of interest occur in a minority of the overall clauses. For example,
in examining the frequency of nominative versus ergative case in simple present tense
clauses, I restrict my focus to simple present tense clauses with overt subjects that
are not part of modal constructions. Out of the 2845 total clauses, 54 clauses fit those
criteria.

The thirteen speakers represented in this corpus sample are mostly male and
university-educated, and they are from many different areas of Nepal. Only one listed
a language other than Nepali as a first language, but two additionally list dialects of

53
Nepali that they speak. Thus we might suspect an effect of dialect variation, which
I discuss in the next section.

2.5 The Problem of Lect

Variable ergativity in Nepali is conditioned by multiple pragmatic and semantic fac-

tors. Considering the dialect diversity in Nepali, it is reasonable to suspect that
variable ergativity might have different manifestations in different dialects and vary
by social, ethnic, and geographical factors. A significant proportion of Nepalis are L2
learners of the Nepali language, the variable ergative pattern in Nepal may have de-
veloped from contact with Tibeto-Burman languages in which this type of pattern is
more common. However, among the 53 Nepali speakers whose statements and judg-
ments form the basis of this analysis, there is fairly little diversity. While individual
speakers may differ in their precise judgments on particular pragmatic and semantic
phenomena, the broad pattern is the same: the ergative is obligatory in the perfective
and variable in the imperfective where it correlates not with agency/volitionality but
with the subject being emphasized as an effector of the event.

In Figure (2.5) I have tabulated the birth regions by Province of every elicitation
consultant, survey respondent, and speaker from the NNSP sample. My focus of
investigation has been primarily on speakers from Kathmandu Valley in Province 3,
which is the regional dialect studied by Clark (1963), Abadie (1974), and Li (2007).
While Province 3 predominates in this sample of Nepali speakers, there is a fair
amount of regional diversity, particularly among the Corpus speakers.

As noted in the first chapter, the greatest amount of dialect diversity is in Sudur
Paschim and Karnali. In the east of the country (the first three provinces) there is
much less dialect diversity. The general social perception of dialect in Nepal is that
speakers in the far east speak the most “pure,” prescriptively correct Nepali, while

54
 Elicitation Consultants Survey Respondents Corpus Speakers
Province 1 SB, BB, KS 18, 19, 26 M3
Province 2 M2
Province 3 BA, TD, AG, PK, RM 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 F4, M9,
GM, SP, UP, ST 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 24, 28 M24, M26
Gandaki MG 3, 4, 6, M1, M13
Province 5 1, 4, 27 M7
Karnali 7
Sudur Paschim 22, 25 M14

Figure 2.7: Birth Regions of Nepali Speakers

in the West (and in the southern part of the whole country) the speech is thought
to have been corrupted by influence from other languages. Because people from all
over the region move into Kathmandu Valley, the speech is more varied, though not
as varied as in the West.

There is very little in the literature that pertains to ergative patterning in dialects
other than that of Kathmandu. Ahearn (2001b) writes that the usage of ergativity in
the imperfective is prominent in the Nepali-speaking Magar community she studies,
although this usage was first noted by Grierson (1904b), whose consultants were
mainly from the Darjeeling region of India along Nepal’s eastern border (Nepal was

55
closed to foreign researchers at the time). Clark (1963) notes that this usage is
prescriptively incorrect but common in colloquial speech. UP (a principal and former
schoolteacher in Lalitpur district) and other educators have confirmed to me that the
usage of the ergative in the imperfective is generally seen as prescriptively incorrect
and emblematic of Nepali spoken by ethnic groups who traditionally spoke their own
languages. Dr. Madhav Pokharel mentioned to me that ergative alternations in the
imperfective are not found in the speech of educated Brahmins and Chhetris, although
he did find it to be acceptable with intransitives like nācnu ‘to dance.’4 Rather, this is
indicative of the speech of Nepalis from the Magarrat, in the traditional lands of the
Magar ethnic group west of Kathmandu. SB had an observation about the converse
pattern. While ergative marking is generally required in the perfective, SB noted
that usage of the nominative in perfectives is emblematic of speech in the southern
Terai, both among communities that traditionally speak other languages like Tharu
and Maithili and among Brahmin-Chhetris in the region.

Despite the fact that the majority of my consultants were university-educated, and
many of them were Brahmin-Chhetri and born in the East, the usage of ergativity in
the imperfective is found in the speech of every one of them, and it is also found in
the speech of every one of the corpus speakers.5

Figure (2.5) illustrates the preponderance of ergativity in imperfective clauses in

the Kathmandu Survey and in the corpus sample. For the Kathmandu survey, I
tabulated the average rating of the ergative form for every question in the simple
present tense for each speaker. There are slight differences in the overall ratings,

4. Brahmin and Chhetri were the top two rungs of a legally-codified caste hierarchy in Nepal until
the Constitution of 1990, and the Nepali language as spoken by Brahmins and Chhetris of the Khas
ethnic group is considered to be the standard.

5. Throughout my research there was only one generalization that I could confidently correlate
with regional dialect: MG, a native speaker of Gurung from Gandaki, was the only consultant to
categorically disallow ergative marking in the intransitive verbs nācnu ‘to dance’ and bhoknu ‘to
bark.’

56
but the average is high (around 4.5 out of 5), and only one speaker has an average
rating below 3.6 In the corpus sample, the percentage of ergative-marked subjects
was tabulated among all transitive imperfective clauses with overt subjects. Ergative-
marked subjects are found in the speech of every respondent, with proportions ranging
from 29%- 67% with an average of 48%.7
Taken together, this strongly indicates that all speakers of the Nepali dialects
represented here allow the ergative in imperfective clauses. Furthermore, it is not
immediately apparent that there are distinctive patterns associated with a particular
region, caste, or mother tongue. Further research will be required to tease apart the
complicated issue of language variation. However, my overall impression is that while
speakers from different regions and language backgrounds may differ somewhat in the
strength they give to particular pragmatic and semantic features (such that some may
have grammaticalized, say, a rule that inanimate subjects must be marked ergative
while for others it may simply be a strong tendency), for each speaker it is the same
set of pragmatic and semantic features which are at play.

6. This speaker, 26, is a 53-year-old academic from Province 1, which suggests a prescriptive bias.

7. The lowest values were found with speakers M9 and M13, from Province 3 (Kathmandu) and
Gandaki respectively. The highest values were found with speakers M2 and M7, from Province 2
and Province 5.

57
Figure 2.8: Ergative Marking in Imperfective Clauses by Speaker

58
Chapter 3

Theories

In this chapter, I begin with an overview of the explanations that have been offered
for the Nepali ergative pattern. These explanations fit into the broader literature on
optional case marking systems. I then overview the major explanations that have
been proposed for Optional Ergative Marking and discuss them in the context of
the general literature.

3.1 General explanations of the Nepali Pattern

Nepali grammars and grammatical sketches (Grierson 1904a, Turnbull 1982, Acharya
1991) do not typically go into detail with regards to the semantic or pragmatic factors
that differentiate case marking in the imperfective domain. However, discussions of
these differences may be found occasionally in readers for English-speaking students
of Nepali (Clark 1963, Matthews 1998, and Hutt and Subedi 1999).

The earliest detailed investigation into the variable ergative marking pattern in
Nepali is Abadie (1974), who looked at ergative marking in different main clause
tenses and in modal contexts. Li (2007) examines ergative patterning in transitive
and intransitive main clauses and concludes that there is a categorical split based on
animacy: inanimate subjects take ergative marking in all tenses and aspects. Verbeke

59
(2011) has an excellent review of the previous work on Nepali ergativity throughout
the grammar. In this section, I will first discuss explanations that have been offered
for the ergative patterning in transitive main clauses. I will then discuss the use of
the ergative in intransitive contexts, and then explanations of the ergative in modal
contexts.

3.1.1 Case Marking in Traditional Grammar

Traditional Nepali grammars are based on the model of the ancient Sanskrit grammar-
ians, particularly the fifth-century BCE Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini and its commentaries.
In the description of the nominal case system of Sanskrit, Pāṇini notably disassoci-
ates the form of a case inflection from its associated semantic role. This distinction is
expressed by the Sanskrit terms Vibhakti (“case”, “division”) and Kāraka (“role”,
lit. “doer”) (Keidan 2011).

Role English Gloss

Kartā Agent
Karma Patient
Karaṇ Instrument
Sampradān Beneficiary
Apādān Source
Sambandha Possessor
Adhikaraṇ Location
Sambodhan Addressee

Figure 3.1: Nepali Kāraka: Argument Roles (Pradhān 1944)

The relation between vibhakti and kāraka can be understood as a distinction be-
tween the form of a nominal case inflection on the one hand, and the semantic role of
a participant on the other hand.1 The vibhakti are simply named Prathamā “first,”
1. Computational versions of this grammatical framework have been applied to text clustering
and treebank parsed text corpora. This Paninian Framework may be particularly well-suited to
Indic languages because of their relatively free word order and because of mismatches and interplay
between semantic roles and syntactic forms. Some contributions in this field include Bharati et al.
(1995), Begum (2017), and Sharma and Gupta (2012).

60
Dvitīyā “second,” etc., while the kāraka have descriptive names which indicate the
semantic role of the noun. These classifications and terms, which are also found in
Whitney (1879) and MacDonell (1927)’s Sanskrit grammars, are applied to Nepali in
Pradhān (1944)’s influential early grammar of Nepali.2

Pradhān’s chapter on Nepali case begins with a description of the eight Nepali
kāraka (Pradhān 1944: 18-25). These roles are depicted in Figure (3.1). The two
roles which are most relevant to our purpose are kartā, or ‘agent’, and karaṇ, or
‘instrument.’ The kartā is defined as the participant “which does work or has the
ability to do work.”3 The karaṇ is defined as the participant “through the aid of
which the work is accomplished.”4 Pradhān notes that the marker le is associated
with both roles, but the kartā role answers the question “Who did the action?” while
the karaṇ role answers the question “With what was the action done?”

Pradhān does not mention the optional usage of le in the imperfective, although
from Grierson (1904a) we know it was a feature of colloquial speech, and Clark (1963)
notes that it was considered prescriptively incorrect by traditional grammarians.

Pradhān summarizes the vibhakti by associating each with a semantic role and
giving corresponding suffixes. Figure (3.2) is a translation of his chart with corre-
sponding English case terminology.

I have given the correspondence to the first vibhakti as both Nominative and
Ergative, although there is not a conception of ergative case in traditional Nepali
grammar. Rather, in discussing the Kartā role Pradhān considers le to be the marker

2. Tikaram Poudel (p.c.) emphasizes the influence of Parasmaṇi Pradhān’s Nepālī Vyākaraṇ
(“Nepali Grammar”), which was first published in 1920. There are a few departures from Pāṇini’s
original classification: Whitney (1879) notes that Pāṇini has seven vibhakti, but Whitney and Prad-
hān both include an eighth vocative case. Additionally, Pāṇini does not count the genitive case
because it is a relation between a noun and another noun, while the rest are noun-verb relations
(Jinitha 2009).

3. “Kunai kā garna wā garnasakne sangyālāi ‘kartā’ bhandāchan.” [All translations are my own.]

4. “Jaskā sahāyatāle kunai kā garincha tyaslāi ‘karaṇ’ bhandāchan.”

61
 Vibhakti (Case) Meaning Marker or Suffix
Prathamā (Nominative/Ergative) Kartā (Agent) le/bāṭa5
Dvitiyā (Accusative) Karma (Patient) lāi
Tritiyā (Instrumental) Karaṇ (Instrument) le/bāṭa
Caturthi (Dative) Sampradān (Beneficiary) lāi
Pancami (Ablative) Apādān (Source) dekhi/dekhin/bāṭa
Sasṭhi (Genitive) Sambandha (Possessor) ko/kā/ki
Saptami (Locative) Sambodhan (Location) mā
Sambodhan (Vocative) Bolāunu (Addressee) e... ho

Figure 3.2: Nepali Vibhakti: Nominal Cases (Pradhān 1944)

of this role, but it is only used in transitive verbs in the “past” and “future” tenses.6
The past tense includes all of my perfective forms, and the future is what I refer to as
the Definite Future. Pradhān strongly associates the vibhakti with its corresponding
kāraka, but the suffixes themselves correspond less closely to the kāraka roles: le is
associated with both Kartā and Karaṇ, while lāi is associated with both Karma and
Sampradān.

One could imagine an alternate formulation in which each suffix is taken to rep-
resent a single vibhakti. In Sanskrit, the main usage of the Instrumental vibhakti
was to describe an instrument or means by which the action takes place. But it had
other uses. It could designate a reason or medium. It could also designate an agent,
particularly as the demoted subject of a passive construction (Whitney 1879: 81).
In the same way, one could imagine -le to be an instrumental marker even when it
appears on agents.

However, no traditional grammar of Nepali does this as far as I am aware: St and

Si , whether unmarked or marked by le, are always considered to be Prathamā vibhakti
(nominative case).7 Clark (1963) is a Nepali reader for English speakers which does

6. “Kartā kārakko cinha ‘le’ ho. Sakarmak kriyāmā bhut ra bhivashyat kā bujhāũdā kartā kāraksita
yo vibhakti prayog huncha. Akarmak kriyāmā tā hundaina.” [“The marker of the Agent role is ‘le.’
For transitive verbs which are implied to be in past or future tense, this case is used on the Agent
role. For intransitive verbs it is not.”](Pradhān 1944: 19).

7. Tikaram Poudel, p.c.

62
conceive of the grammar in this way: the argument marked with le is considered to
be in the Instrumental case whether or not it is the subject. Grierson (1904a) called
this a separate “Agent case,” which is more in line with the Sanskrit tradition.

Most modern English language descriptions of the Nepali language do not engage
with the traditional literature on Nepali grammar, although Verma 1976 brings up
the vibhakti/kāraka distinction in discussing the notion of the subject in Nepali.

3.1.2 Disambiguation

Abadie (1974) is a detailed investigation of Nepali ergative patterning in main clauses

and in modal contexts. Abadie argues that the presence or absence of the ergative
marker rarely signals a difference in meaning. Rather the ergative marker disam-
biguates the subject argument in examples like the following in which it would oth-
erwise be ambiguous:

(17) yo gāi-le khān-cha

this cow-erg eat-pres.3.sg
‘This cow eats.’ (Abadie 1974: 170)

Without the ergative marker, there are two possible interpretations. The demon-
strative could either apply to “cow” or it could apply to a deleted subject, with “cow”
acting as the direct object of “eat”:

(18) yo gāi khān-cha

this cow eat-pres.3.sg
‘This cow eats.’ / ‘This (one) eats cow.’ [TD]

Another example provided by Abadie is the following:

(19) birua-haru-lāi hāmi nepāli-(le) jamarā bhan-da-chaũ

plant-pl-acc we nepali-(erg) jamara call-pres-1.pl
‘(This) plant we Nepalis call jamara.’ / ’(This) plant we call nepali jamara.’
(Abadie 1974: 170)

63
 If the ergative marker is used, only the first reading is possible. Nepali is unam-
biguously the subject of the clause. Otherwise, both readings are possible.
This explanation, that the motivation for the ergative marker is to disambiguate
arguments, is common for optional ergative patterns. I discuss this in the next section
on General Theories of Optional Ergativity. However, it does not explain the presence
of ergative/nominative alternations in which there is no ambiguity about the identity
of subject argument.

3.1.3 Animacy

Some linguists have argued that the presence of ergative marking in Nepali is at
least partially conditioned by the semantics of the NP. In particular, Verma (1976),
Pokharel (1998), and Li (2007) argue that subjects with inanimate reference must be
marked in the ergative in all tenses:

(20) a. dhungā-haru-le jhāl phuṭ-ā-e

rock-pl-erg window break-caus-perf.3.pl
‘The rocks broke the window.’ (Li 2007: 1465)

b. dhungā-haru-le jhāl phuṭ-āu-dai-chan

rock-pl-erg window break-caus-prog-pres.3.pl
‘The rocks are breaking the window.’ (Li 2007: 1467)

In the first example above, we expect the ergative to be required because the
transitive verb is in the perfective. In the second example as well, in which the
ergative marker would usually optional because the tense is imperfective, the ergative
marker is again required because the subject is inanimate.
Li was not the first to notice this tendency of inanimate subjects in Nepali. Verma
(1976) noted this as well, and argued that the ergative is required because it is a
“secondary” agent in sentences like the following:

(21) dudh-le keṭā-haru-lāi pos-cha

milk-erg child.obl-pl-dat nourish-pres.3.sg

64
 ‘Milk nourishes children.’ [SB]

However, Li argues that this represents an exceptionless split in the ergative

paradigm: all inanimate subjects are required to be marked irrespective of the tense
(in the domain of transitive verbs).
This is significant because it suggests the presence of a second ergative split in the
language: a split based on the animacy of the referent NP in addition to the known
split based on verbal aspect. Ergative splits based on the Nominal hierarchy are
common in the world’s languages, and will be discussed at length in the Markedness
section of the General Theories of Optional Ergativity chapter below.
However, there are two potential problems with Li’s argument. The first is that
it can be difficult to tell whether an inanimate argument is the subject in a transitive
clause or if it is a instrumental (non-core) argument. Recall that the instrumental
marker is also -le.
Taking Verma’s example above, it could be argued that the intended meaning
was actually “(One) nourishes children with milk.” The only way to differentiate the
subject and instrumental is with verbal cross-reference; if the subject is plural then
plural agreement should be possible on the noun, but there will be no agreement with
an instrumental.
With Verma’s example, “milk” is a mass noun, so it would not generally be marked
with a plural. If we change the nourishment to eggs, we run up against the difficulty
that the plural would not usually be marked in a generic context (“eggs nourish
children”), but we have to change the example to “These eggs will nourish these
children.” My consultants found that plural marking on the verb is still infelicitous
here:

(22) yi andā-haru-le keṭā-haru-lāi pos-cha

these egg-pl-erg child.obl-pl-dat nourish-pres.3.sg
(#pos-chan)
(#nourish-pres.3.pl)

65
 ‘(Someone) will nourish children with these eggs.’ (not, ‘These eggs will nour-
ish children.’) [SB]

This indicates that we are looking at an instrumental rather than an ergative

subject, and it illustrates how difficult it can be to tease them apart. Inanimate
subjects are somewhat rare in Nepali, but Poudel (2008) gives an example to illustrate
that inanimate subjects are possible:

(23) a. yo cābi-le yi ḍhokā khol-yo

this.sg key-erg this.pl door open.trans-perf.3.sg
‘This key opened these doors.’

b. yo cābi-le yi ḍhokā khul-e

this.sg key-instr this.pl door open.intrans-perf.3.pl
‘These doors opened with this key.’

In the first example, “key” is argued to be the subject of the sentence, whereas in
the second example “key” is an instrumental. Plurality is expressed with the usage of
singular or plural determiners yo/yi, and there is verbal agreement in number. In the
first example, the verb has singular agreement and “key” is singular. In the second
example, the verb has plural agreement to agree with “these doors.”

However, the first example of this sentence pair is still potentially ambiguous with
a reading “(Someone) opened these doors with this key.” To prove that “key” is indeed
the subject here, one would need to specify a context in which multiple people opened
multiple doors using a single key.

Another issue with the animacy argument is that there may be exceptions to
the generalization. Verbeke (2011) in particular points to examples in the Nepali
literature of sentences with inanimate subjects which are unmarked:

(24) sireṭo muṭu cheḍ-lā bhane jasto gar-th-yo

wind heart pierce-indef.fut quot if do-impf.3.sg
‘The wind blew (acted) as if it would pierce the heart.’ (Acharya 1991: 191)

66
 The Nominal hierarchy, as described in detail below, includes subdivisions of com-
mon nouns and personal pronominal forms. Human referents are ranked higher than
non-human referents. Interestingly, Pokharel (1998) suggests that ergative marking
is less common for humans, suggesting more of a tendency than a split. Giving the
examples below, he writes “the inanimate transitive subjects obligatorily take -le, the
human subject may or may not take it and the non-human subject more likely chooses
it.”(Pokharel 1998: 47)

(25) bancara-le rukh dhal-cha

ax-erg tree fell-pres.3.sg
‘The ax fells the tree.’8 (Pokharel 1998: 47)

(26) kamila-(le) cini khān-cha

ant sugar eat-pres.3.sg
‘The ant eats the sugar.’ (Pokharel 1998: 47)

(27) mānche-(le) cini khān-cha

person-(erg) sugar eat-pres.3.sg
‘The person eats the sugar.’ (Pokharel 1998: 47)

Pokharel suggests here that these are tendencies rather than hard categories. So
animacy may be a factor in the expression of ergativity, but it remains an open
question whether there is a categorical split as Li describes. Furthermore, it may be
a secondary factor or an epiphenomenon of some other conditioning factor.

3.1.4 Stage-Level and Individual-Level Predication

Butt and Poudel (2007) argue that -le marks individual-level predication. This termi-
nology comes from Carlson (1977b)’s division of predicates into two natural classes,
as stage-level or individual-level. Stage-level predicates typically describe tran-
sient or episodic states, while individual-level predicates describe enduring properties.
Consider the following sentences of English:
8. This might be an instrumental usage of -le.

67
 (28) Examples of stage-level predicates:

a. Shristi is distracted.

b. The zookeeper is feeding the crocodiles.

(29) Examples of individual-level predicates:

a. Kiran is left-handed.

b. Leopards are mammals.

c. Horatio hates to play the harmonica.

The first two examples describe temporary, time-bounded episodes, while the
latter three describe properties of an individual or a kind. Note that individual-level
predicates may be copular phrases or predicates with a generic interpretation. Carlson
argues that individual-level predicates denote properties of an individual, while stage-
level predicates denote properties of a particular spatio-temporal slice or stage of an
individual. Others have formalized the distinction in terms of different syntactic
constructions (Diesing 1992) or argument structures (Kratzer 1995, Chierchia 1995).
English adjectives like drunk, ready, infuriated, and dusty are typically stage-level,
while adjectives like clever, redheaded, tall and reliable are typically individual-level.
Some adjectives can be interpreted as stage-level or individual-level depending on the
context: sick as a stage-level adjective refers to a lapse in physical health, while sick
as an individual-level adjective refers to a more permanent property of mental health.
The two types of predications behave differently in particular grammatical con-
texts of English, as with bare plural subjects (Carlson 1977a) or adverbs of quantifi-
cation (Kratzer 1995). Furthermore, the distinction has been argued to apply in a
wide range of grammatical constructions crosslinguistically (Roy 2013). In particular,
multiple languages appear to grammaticalize the distinction with different copulas for
individual-level and stage-level predications:

(30) Spanish (Leonetti 1994: 255,260)

68
 a. juan está triste
juan cop sad
‘Juan is sad.’

b. maría es muy guapa

maría cop very pretty.f
‘María is very pretty.’

(31) Scottish Gaelic (Ramchand et al. 1997: 204-205)

a. tha calum sgith

be-pres calum tired
‘Calum is tired.’

b. is dotair calum
Cop-pres doctor Calum
‘Calum is a doctor.’

(32) Marathi (Deo 2017)

a. karvāḍh-i-muḷe lok-a dukkhi āhe-t

tax.increase-obl-by people-nom.n.pl unhappy pres1-3.pl
‘People are unhappy because of the tax increase.’

b. ḍāyeṭ kar-ṇāri lok-a dukkhi as-tāt

diet do-part.n.pl people-nom.n.pl unhappy pres2-3.m.pl
‘Dieters are unhappy.’

It should be noted that in recent years, some linguists have argued that the
stage-level/individual-level distinction is too coarse-grained and does not accurately
represent the semantics (see in particular Roy (2013) for a more nuanced theory)
or discourse properties (for example Deo (2017) discusses the facts in Marathi and
Sanchez-Alonso (to appear) in Spanish). But the stage-level/individual-level distinc-
tion is relevant for an understanding of the Nepali pattern.

69
Stage-Level Predication in Nepali

As mentioned in the Introduction section, Nepali has two present tense copulas cha
and ho. Butt and Poudel (2007) invoke the stage-level / individual-level distinction
in explaining the distribution of these copulas:

(33) Nepali (Butt and Poudel 2007: 5)

a. saru.bhakta āja khusi chan

saru.bhakta today happy cop2.pres.3.m.hon
‘Saru Bhakta is happy today.’

b. saru.bhakta kabi hun

saru.bhakta poet cop1.pres.3.m.hon
‘Saru Bhakta is a poet.’

They argue that outside of the copular domain this distinction is preserved with
the presence or absence of the ergative marker (Butt and Poudel 2007: 7):

(34) a. cālak-le gāḍi calāu-cha

driver-erg car drive-pres.3.sg
‘The driver drives the vehicles.’

b. guru gāḍi calāu-cha

teacher car drive-pres.3.sg
‘The teacher is driving/will drive the vehicle.’

The context in the first example is that a school’s bus driver drives the children
everyday: that is his occupation. In the second example the teacher just happens to
be driving the bus today because the bus driver is out. The simple present tense of
the verb calāucha ‘to drive’ has three possible interpretations: it may have a habitual
reading, an immediate present reading, or a future-oriented reading. In this sentence,
-le marks the reading with individual-level predication, that is, the habitual reading.
Butt and Poudel (2007) note that the ergative is never found with copulas; they
are in complementary distribution. Thus the stage-level/individual-level distinction
(in the present tense) is preserved with the dual copulas in the copular domain and

70
with the ergative marker outside of it. Furthermore, the distinction disappears in
the perfective for copulas (there is only one copula in the perfective), just as the
ergative/nominative alternation disappears for transitive verbs disappears in the per-
fective.

Similarly, Hutt and Subedi (1999) note that the ergative “can be used to emphasise
the subject of a transitive verb in the habitual present tense... if the sentence says
that it is a part of the natural order of things for the subject to perform the verb, and
therefore states that this is a role that is specific to the subject” (Hutt and Subedi
1999: 116). They provide the following examples:

(35) a. kukhurā-le phul pār-cha

chicken-erg egg lay-pres.3.sg
‘A chicken lays eggs.’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 116)

b. bāgh-le bākhrā khān-cha

tiger-erg goat eat-pres.3.sg
‘A tiger eats goats.’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 116)

c. ghām-le nyāno din-cha

sunshine-erg warmth give-pres.3.sg
‘Sunshine gives warmth.’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 116)

d. pakkā bahun-le raksi khān-daina

proper Brahmin-erg alcohol eat-pres.3.sg.neg
‘A proper Brahmin does not drink alcohol.’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 116)

However, one problem with this theory is that -le may also be found in clauses for
which the predicate is neither habitual nor individual-level, and in tenses for which
there is no ambiguity. Verbeke provides a few examples in which individual-level
predication does not seem to be present:

(36) rājā-le sodh-e han yas-le pheri ke bhan-dai-che

king-erg ask-perf.3.sg Q she-erg again what say-cont-pres.3.f.sg
‘The king asked: What is she saying?’ (Verbeke 2011: 165)

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 (37) aphu-le na-bok-era kas-le bok-i-din-cha?
oneself-erg neg-carry-conj who-erg carry-lnk-give-pres.3.sg
‘If I don’t carry it myself, who will carry it?’ (Verbeke 2011: 165)

While the simple present tense is ambiguous between stage-level and individual-
level interpretations, there are other imperfective tenses for which the ergative/nominative
alternation exists, and Butt and Poudel’s theory is inapplicable. We can make a min-
imal adjustment to their example to make it unambiguously stage-level. Here the
ergative is still in alternation.

(38) a. guru-(le) gāḍi calāu-dai-cha

teacher car drive-cont-pres.3.sg
‘The teacher is driving/will drive the vehicle.’

3.1.5 Perfectivity

Verbeke (2011) and Verbeke (2013) suggest that the use of -le outside of the perfective
form provides a sense perfectivity or completion to the action of an imperfective verb.
The interpretation is that a state of affairs is certain or factual, and that an endpoint
is implied.

The use of -le in the imperfective context may be employed to convey that the
action is conceived of as certain or inherently completed in the mind of the speaker.
Because of this, use of -le may be particularly associated with rhetorical questions,
or with certainty that an event will be completed:

(39) kas-le timī-lāi birsa-na sak-cha?

who.obl-erg you-acc forget-inf can-pres.3.sg
‘Who can (possibly) forget you?’ (Verbeke 2011: 165)

(40) maile huṃkāra gar-ā-ũla

I.obl-erg command do-caus-fut
‘I will have you do my command.’ (Verbeke 2011: 165)

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 Verbeke also refers to the completed interpretation as telic, which commonly refers
to the lexical semantics of predicates which have a distinct endpoint, like arrive or
cross the street as opposed to those which do not, like dance or play cards. Poudel
(2008) gives an example of ergative alternation which he refers to as distinguishing
“Accomplishment vs. Non-accomplishment.” The notion appears to be quite similar
to Verbeke’s:

(41) a. rām-le bihāna-dekhi pāni bhy-ā-i rah-eko cha

ram-erg morning-from water bear-caus-lnk stay-perf pres.3.sg
‘Ram has been fetching water since this morning. (and he finished fetching
it).’ (Poudel 2008: 8)

b. rām bihāna-dekhi pāni bhy-ā-i rah-eko cha

ram morning-from water bear-caus-lnk stay-perf pres.3.sg
‘Ram has been fetching water since this morning. (and he has not yet
finished fetching it).’ (Poudel 2008: 8)

In this situation, the usage of the ergative appears to correlate with whether the
activity is ongoing or completed.
This approach and the individual-level predication approach share the intuition
that ergative marking has an effect on the interpretation of the event. The intuition
is that the case marker itself can be considered part of the verbal aspectual mor-
phology. In discussing the Sanskrit passive-to-perfective reanalysis that originally
brought ergativity into the languages, Anderson notes that normally “we think of
verbal categories such as tense and aspect as marked on the verb, and not (partly)
on the NP, but this by no means necessary.”(Anderson 1977: 336). The instrumental
in Sanskrit went from being part of the syntactic passivization construction to being
part of the general aspectual marking of perfectivity. By the same token, the later
extension of ergativity into the imperfective domain in Nepali is reinterpreted as part
of the aspectual machinery of the language.
On the other hand, Verbeke argues that the use of -le is optional in that it can

73
be used to emphasize completion but is never obligatory. Ergative marking here
is arguably not semantic but pragmatic; it does not have an effect on the truth
conditions of the sentence, but rather conveys certainty on the part of the speaker.

While Verbeke’s approach moves forward our understanding of emphasis, it is not

necessarily applicable to most or all of the domains in which ergative marking varies
with its absence.

3.1.6 The Intransitive Domain

In a canonical ergative pattern, we expect ergative marking to be completely dis-

allowed in intransitive clauses. However, we do find ergative marking with certain
intransitive verbs in Nepali. For example, Pokharel (1998) notes that intransitive
verbs of “outward energy emission,” typically non-volitional natural bodily processes,
always take a subject marked by -le:

(42) keṭā-le khok-yo

boy-erg cough-perf.3.sg
‘The boy coughed.’

Li (2007) surveyed 110 intransitive verbs in Nepali, particularly examining those

categories relevant for the distinction between unaccusative and unergative verbs
as listed by Perlmutter (1978). Unaccusative verbs, according to the Unaccusativ-
ity Hypothesis, are those in which the single core argument is initially generated in
object position and moves to subject position. They are contrasted with unergative
verbs, in which the single core argument is initially in subject position. Although
Perlmutter argues that this distinction is primarily a syntactic one, there are seman-
tic features that are broadly associated with one category or the other. Here are the
categories listed by Perlmutter and applied to Nepali by Li:

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 Unaccusative Verbs English Examples

Argument semantically a patient burn, fall, drop, sink, float, soar

Predicates of existing/happening exist, happen, transpire, occur

Non-voluntary emission of stimuli shine, sparkle, glitter, glow

Aspectual predicates begin, start, come, cease

Duratives last, remain, stay, survive

Unergative Verbs English Examples

Predicates of willed/volitional acts work, play, cheat, fly, think

Verbs speaking or animal/human sounds shout, whisper, roar, bark

Involuntary bodily processes cough, belch, burp, vomit

Li’s finding for Nepali is that the unaccusative verbs categorically disallow ergative
marking in all cases (Li 2007: 1468). However, with unergative verbs the situation
is more complex. Case marking on subjects varies “according to tenses/aspects, and
even speakers.” Ergative marking in the perfective is possible or obligatory for all of
these verbs,9 and varies according to speaker in whether it is possible or obligatory
in the imperfective domain.

Li argues that lexical semantics plays a role in the patterning of ergatives in

the unergative domain. In particular, telic verbs seem to resist ergative marking
in Nepali. These are verbs which have a set endpoint, like āunu ‘come’, jānu ‘go’,
in contrast to verbs which do not have a set endpoint, like nācnu ‘dance’, dagurnu
‘run.’ Thus, Li concludes that only atelic unergative verbs allow ergative marking.
Li also notes that ‘optionality’ may indicate that the marker imparts subtle semantic
differences, but leaves this issue open for future research (Li 2007: footnote 9).

Note that this is the second time we have encountered the term “telicity” in a
discussion of ergative patterning in Nepali, although here the usage is closer to the
9. There were two exceptions uḍnu ‘fly’ and runu ‘cry’ for three of the speakers.

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way telicity is commonly used in the literature. Verbeke used the term to refer to an
emphasis on the completedness of an event (in transitive clauses). Interestingly, for
Verbeke ergative marking emphasized telic aspect, while Li notes that semantically
telic verbs disallow ergative marking. I will discuss telicity more thoroughly in the
Observations section below.

3.1.7 Ergative Marking in Particular Structures and Tenses/Aspects

Abadie (1974), Pokharel (1998), and Poudel (2008) have each noted the particular
behavior of the ergative in certain tenses and modal constructions. The meaning of
these tenses may tell us about the contribution of the ergative marker. Abadie in
particular notes the behavior of the ergative in construction in tenses which deal with
the semantic area of permission or obligation. These include the tenses which I am
referring to as the indefinite future, the definite future, and modal constructions of
obligation and necessity.

Hypothetical Future

In this tense the ergative marker is optional “for emphasis,” according to (Clark 1963:
164). Abadie notes that with the bare form can be a question, but this cannot be the
case with the ergative form.

(43) a. ma khā-ũ
I eat-hyp.fut.1.sg
‘Should I eat?’

b. mai-le khā-ũ
I-erg eat-hyp.fut.1.sg
‘It would be nice if I ate.’

Optative

Poudel (2008) simply notes that this verb tense is more amenable to ergative marking

76
than the simple present in the following context:

(44) a. us-le tyo sarpa mār-os

he.obl-erg that snake kill-opt.3.sg
‘(I wish) he could kill that snake.’

b. u tyo sarpa mār-cha

he that snake kill-pres.3.sg
‘He will kill the snake.’

However, Poudel does not mention whether the ergative marker is optional in the
first case and whether it correlates with a meaning difference. As I discuss in the
Observation section, my consultants found the ergative to be optional in both cases.

Definite Future

Abadie (1974) finds the assertion of Clark (1963), that -le is excluded in this tense, to
be untrue. Poudel (2008) contrasts the usage of the ergative with the definite future
and the nominative form with a future reading of the simple present:

(45) a. jiban-le bholi ganit paḍh-āu-ne chan

jiban-erg tomorrow math read-caus-def.fut pres.3.hon
‘(It is certain that) Jiban will study math tomorrow.’

b. jiban bholi ganit paḍh-āu-chan

jiban tomorrow math read-caus-pres.3.hon
‘Jiban will study math tomorrow.’

The definite future is not an inflected tense but rather a periphrastic construction
with an auxiliary and the verb marked with the -ne infinitive.

Modal Constructions

In the introduction section I noted the alternations between ergative and accusative
case on the subjects in modal constructions of obligation and necessity. These con-
structions utilize the verb parnu. Abadie argues that the semantic difference here is
one of internalized necessity rather than obligation:

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 (46) a. ma-lāi māntri hu-nu par-cha
I-acc priest be-inf must-pres.3.sg
‘I should be a priest.’ (Abadie 1974: 172)

b. maile māntri hu-nu par-cha

I.erg priest be-inf must-pres.3.sg
‘I had to be a minister.’ (Abadie 1974: 172)

In the first case, there is an implication of social pressure from others, but with
the ergative the pressure comes from within. Abadie discusses ergative marking with
several other constructions, and argues that the ergative tends to be required in
constructions that have to do with obligations.

3.1.8 Multiple Factor Analysis

Verbeke (2013) argues that none of the analyses given so far fully account for the
given data. While perfectivity, focus, individual-level predication, or animacy can be
invoked to explain the usage of the ergative in a particular case, none of them can
explain every case. There are always exceptions. It is thus likely that there are a
range of features which correlate probabilistically with the expression of ergativity.

Verbeke and De Cuypere (2015) run a statistical analysis on a corpus of 355 Nepali
sentences compiled from the CRULP corpus (www.crulp.org) with additional samples
from published Nepali short stories. They examine the following nine factors:

(1) Animacy of the subject

(2) Pronominality of the subject

(3) Person of the subject

(4) Honorific marking on the verb

(5) Presence of the subject argument (whether it is overt or covert)

(6) Type of the clause (nominal or clausal)

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 (7) Marking of the O (whether the object is marked or not)

(8) Stage/Individual-Level interpretation of clause

(9) Verb Tense

Comparing two statistical models (a logistic regression analysis and a classification

tree model), they find that no single factor in itself accounts for most of the observed
variability. They find evidence for four significant variables: Subject Animacy, Tense,
Honorificity, and Subject Person. The ergative marker is positively associated with
inanimate subjects (the strongest finding), the definite future tense, and non-local
subjects. It is negatively associated with honorificity.

Verbeke and De Cuypere argue that these relate to two main functions of the
ergative marker: to emphasize the agent role, and to mark semantic features of the
verb. They conclude that “the use of an ergative marker in imperfective constructions
is not determined by one particular factor alone, but instead motivated by various
preferences that operate simultaneously.”(Verbeke and De Cuypere 2015: 19)

3.1.9 Summary

The picture that emerges from this literature is a lack of consensus on a single primary
factor or set of factors that correlate with the expression of ergative where it is
variable.

In imperfective transitive clauses, the ergative appears to correlate with certain

Properties of the Subject: Animacy and Person. Ergative marking is more com-
mon if not required on inanimate subjects, and is less common on 1st and 2nd person
subjects. It may be the case that the ergative emphasizes the agency or volitionality
of the subject, because it is associated with interpretations of the indefinite future
and in models of obligation with situations in which the subject has more control of
their situation.

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 In imperfective transitive clauses, the ergative appears to correlate with certain
Properties of the Event: Ergative marking seems to correlate with individual-level
predicates, or predicates that are interpreted as more complete, including the definite
future and all tenses with perfective aspect.

In intransitive clauses, the ergative is completely absent for unaccusatives but

present on many unergatives. In the unergative domain there is considerable vari-
ability between lexical items, in different tenses, and even among speakers. Ergative
marking is more common on atelic verbs.

One way to adequately characterize the patterning of ergativity in Nepali might be

to list each of the these factors independently, and perhaps make observations about
their strength in relation to each other. For example, do considerations of animacy
trump considerations of semantics in particular tenses? However, to my mind this
approach ignores the extraordinarily complex interweaving of these factors. How do
properties of the subject affect properties of the verb and vice versa? There is a subtle
and as yet unexplained relationship between individual-level predication, perfectivity,
and ergative marking. Furthermore, we see nearly all of these factors at play to a
greater or lesser extent in other ergative languages, as we see in the next section.

3.2 General Theories of Optional Ergativity

3.2.1 Overview

There are four main characterizations of optional ergativity as it appears in the de-
scriptive literature.10 Many of these theories intersect and overlap with each other.
10. McGregor divides the theories into five categories: Discriminative, Pragmatic, Semantic,
Global, and Semiotic. Here I am not discussing the Global category, in which the ergative is
correlated with sociolinguistic factors like formality, status, gender, and dialect. I do believe that
Optional Ergativity in Nepali can (and most likely does) correlate with these factors, particularly
dialect and formality. Grierson (1904a) attributed optional ergativity to Tibeto-Burman influence
and stated that it is only found in colloquial and non-literary Nepali, and I have repeatedly encoun-
tered the assumption that the high caste and educated do not use the ergative in this way (which

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Discriminative Theories argue that the ergative is used particularly when it is
needed to discriminate or disambiguate the different arguments in a clause. Theo-
ries based on Transitivity take the ergative as a marker of high transitivity in a
clause. Markedness Theories take the ergative to mark atypical or unexpected
subjects. Theories based on Prominence argue that ergative marking makes salient
the referring entity in the discourse.

3.2.2 Terminology

In the literature on split-ergativity, there is a proliferation of terms used to describe

the various case marking patterns. Many of these terms have theoretical implications
built into them, which may or may not be explicitly acknowledged, and are often
used in slightly different ways by different researchers. In this section I give a brief
overview of these terms and their generally accepted meanings, and I will attempt to
justify the precise terminology that I advocate for in this dissertation.

Ergative Case

The term “ergative” itself is controversial, because it implies the existence of a pattern
of case-marking in which St are marked in opposition to O and Si . As we have seen,
objects in Nepali sometimes receive their own accusative marking, and intransitive
subjects sometimes receive ergative marking. So the opposition is not a strong one.
Perhaps “Agent Marking” or “Subject Marking” would be better terms.
Recall that some readers for students used the term “Instrumental” for this case,
which has the effect of (a) ignoring a distinction between the ergative -le and the
instrumental -le, and (b) emphasizing the genetic relationship to Sanskrit, that is,
the historical origin of the ergative case. Grierson, working on a typology of Indo-
Aryan languages before the term ergativity was coined, uses “Agent Case.”
may or may not be true). I believe that these other factors arise as a result of my analysis.

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 I will continue to use the term ergative to describe any usage of the -le marker on a
core argument in Nepali, because the Nepali pattern is one particular manifestation of
a vast typology of subject-marking patterns in Indo-Aryan languages that ultimately
derive from an alignment shift that occurred in the history of the family. The different
patterns in the modern Indo-Aryan languages of India and Nepal (arguably) all derive
from earlier patterns which were more like canonical ergativity, and referring to the
Nepali pattern as ergative connects it with an intimately related phenomenon that is
known as ergativity in the literature of hundreds of other South Asian languages.

Typology of Split Case Marking systems

Split Case Marking systems are those in which case-marking on an argument is dif-
ferentially marked in separate grammatical domains. Typically we are talking about
accusative marking on the O and/or ergative marking on the St . A split is conditioned
either by the nature of the clause (tense, aspect, mood, or main/subordinate status)
or the semantics of the marked NP (animacy, pronominal status, person). Nepali has
both a Split Ergative system with -le and a Split Accusative system with -lāi.

Another frequently-used term is Differential Case Marking, which also refers

specifically to systems in which the case marking is differentially marked in separate
semantically-defined domains. Differential Object Marking refers to any system
in which there are multiple ways to mark objects in a language, but as used in Aissen
(2003) and Fauconnier (2011) it frequently refers to systems in which a particular
marker may be present or absent as in Nepali. For the variable case marking on
the subject of a transitive clause, these authors use the term Differential Subject
Marking (a term preferred by Verbeke and De Cuypere (2015) for Nepali). Con-
versely, the term Differential Agent Marking, specifically refers to the pattern of
marking the St of transitive clauses. This excludes the Si of an intransitive clause.
Usage of the term DAM over DSM emphasizes that ergative marking on the Si is

82
absent in the language, or else that it should be treated theoretically as a separate
phenomenon. Also, McGregor (2010) uses the term Differential Ergative Mark-
ing specifically to refer to systems in which there are multiple overt ergative markers
which are used in separate domains (distinguishing systems in which a marker varies
with its absence).

In all the systems discussed so far, the split is conditioned by semantic factors.
In other systems (as in many Tibeto-Burman languages), a marker may be absent
or present without affecting the meaning of the clause. These are Optional Case
Marking languages, and as regards the usage of the ergative marker they are termed
Optional Ergative Marking languages. Here the expression of case is correlated
with pragmatic factors, and the occurrence of a particular case marker is not wholly
predictable from the grammatical context. Its usage does not depend only on the
semantic interpretation or truth conditions of the clause.

In practice, the boundaries between these systems are not always clear. Aissen
(2003) focuses mostly on the semantic factors that condition DOM, but notes that
there are realms of “optional” marking. Not all languages clearly fit into one system
or another: Nepali is a mixed system which shows patterning consistent with DSM
in the perfective transitive domain and OEM outside of it.

Wherever it is defined, OEM is often followed by a caveat that the term “optional”
is misleading, because it does not indicate the form is in free variation with its absence,
but rather that it is pragmatically-conditioned (Chelliah et al. 2011, DeLancey 2011).
I will refer to the general phenomenon as OEM or OCM, and in Nepali I will refer to
nominative/ergative alternations as variable ergativity or variable case marking.

3.2.3 Discriminative Function

McGregor (2010) notes that this is perhaps the most frequently invoked explanation
for Optional Ergative Marking. Abadie (1974) appeals to a discriminative function

83
for Nepali in arguing that the ergative is used when it is necessary to disambiguate the
arguments. Essentially, ergative marking is employed if there is a chance of confusing
participant roles. That is to say, the ergative is used if it is necessary to specify which
participant is causing the action and which is affected by it. This is a functional
explanation for ergative patterning that is given in some form or another as a general
explanation for ergativity by Dixon (1994), Comrie (1978), and Garrett (1990).

Keenan (1984) offers support for a functional theory of ergativity from Anderson
(1977)’s observation that ergativity is largely restricted to languages with verb-initial
or verb-final canonical word order. Keenan (1984) further notes that for these lan-
guages, word order by itself is not enough to discriminate the two major participants
in cases of subject deletion or fronting. This is not the case for languages with verb-
medial word order.

In a canonically SVO language, for example, deletion of the subject or the object
(SV or VO) does not lead to ambiguity. Word order alone can distinguish subject
deletion from object deletion. Likewise, if the subject is fronted the word order
remains SVO, and if the object is fronted (OSV) this is the only configuration with
two overt arguments preceding the verb. In a canonically SOV language, however,
deletion of the subject or the object leads to potential ambiguity (OV or SV). If
the object is fronted there is again a potential ambiguity between SOV and OSV.
Keenan argues from this that the perceptual function of ergative case-marking is to
discriminate the subject argument from the object argument.

In the context of Optional Ergative Marking, a number of separate observations

are explainable in terms of a discriminative function. “Unexpected” or “Unlikely”
subjects tend to be marked because there is a greater possibility of confusion. For
example, Foley (1986) observes a “disambiguating function” in the ergative marking
of many Highland languages of Papua New Guinea. In Dani, ergative marking is
necessary in a sentence like The pig ate him because this is the opposite of the

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expected relation between these two animate referents.

Similarly, nouns with inanimate reference are generally unlikely to be subjects in

many languages, and this could explain why many languages require ergative marking
on inanimate subjects. This notion of marking less typical subjects is an intrinsic
feature of markedness-based theories, which I discuss in detail in the Markedness
section below.

I would also add that the potential for confusion is only relevant in the absence
of other mechanisms in the language to disambiguate participants. Languages differ
in the extent to which verbal agreement with the subject (or object) also serves to
disambiguate participants. Nepali robustly marks person features on the verb. So
there is never any ambiguity when the subject is local (1st or 2nd person), and a
discriminative function could explain why ergative marking is less common on local
subjects.

The problem with a purely discriminative description of optional ergativity is that

it can be at best only a partial explanation for a larger pattern of case-marking. This is
noted by Du Bois (1987) and McGregor (2010). McGregor (2010: 1618) in particular
observes that discriminative explanations of optional ergativity in grammars typically
provide an example or two in which there would otherwise be ambiguity. But they
generally do not address whether optionality is present when there is no possibility
of confusion. McGregor gives the example of Yuwaalaraay in the grammar Williams
et al. (1980), but this is relevant for Nepali as well. As we have seen, optionality is
present in intransitive clauses, and when both the subject and the object are overt
and in their canonical order, and when there is no possibility of ambiguity due to
verbal agreement in number, gender, or person.

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3.2.4 Transitivity

A clause with at least two core participants is transitive and a clause with a single
core participant is intransitive. Transitivity, however, can be thought of as a gradient
concept that interacts with the expression of ergative case. Below I discuss two
influential theories, which are different ways to formulate the concept of transitivity
as it relates to the grammatical expression of arguments. The first theory is Hopper
and Thompson (1980)’s notion of Transitivity, and the second is Dowty (1991)’s
Proto-Roles.

The Transitivity Hypothesis

Hopper and Thompson (1980) propose that transitivity is a grammatical property

which describes the effectiveness with which an action takes place. Transitivity is a
gradient concept, and whether a particular clause has high or low levels of transitivity
is determined by the aggregation of multiple features. These features, which are listed
below, all relate to the “effectiveness or intensity with which the action is transferred
from one participant to another” (Hopper and Thompson 1980: 252):

High Transitivity Low Transitivity

Participants 2 or more (St and O) 1 participant
Kinesis eventive predicate stative predicate
Aspect telic or perfective atelic or imperfective
Punctuality punctual non-punctual
Affirmation affirmative negative
Mode realis irrealis
Volitionality of St St volitional St non-volitional
Agency of St St high in potency St low in potency
Affectedness of O O totally affected O not affected
Individuation of O O highly individuated O non-individuated

Figure 3.3: Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s Transitivity Prototype

86
 In Figure (3.3) have rearranged the features in the original chart from Hopper
and Thompson (1980: 252) to point out that these features broadly fall into three
categories: the first five features relate to the features of the event itself, the following
two relate to features of the St argument, and the final two relate to features of the
O. Hopper and Thompson argue that every one of these features is related to the
effectiveness by which an event is initiated by one participant and has an effect on
a second participant, and the overall transitivity is the result of all of these features
taken together. I constructed the following examples to follow a cline from high
transitivity to low transitivity:

(47) a. Cain murdered Abel.

b. A grizzly bear is destroying the gazebo.

c. Samuel fears mongooses.

d. There might not be any more pie.

An event generally requires two or more participants to effectively transfer an ac-

tion, as in (47a), (47b), and (47c). A predicate that describes an event, like murder,
is more clearly transitive than a stative predicate like fears. Furthermore, murder is
punctual, meaning that it is generally interpreted as an event that occurs without
duration, whereas fears and is destroying are non-punctual. Under the Aspect cat-
egory, Hopper and Thompson initially refer to telicity, which is a property of the
lexical semantics of a predicate. The predicate destroy is telic because it has a distinct
endpoint, while fears does not. However, Hopper and Thompson also consider verbs
with perfective reference, as in (47a), to have high transitivity,. In either case, the
presence of a definite endpoint is considered to be a mark of high transitivity. And
a clause which describes an actual event is more transitive than one that describes a
hypothetical event or the negation of an event (mode and affirmation respectively).
(47a) has all the features described for the event, (47d) has none, and the others have

87
some and not others.

For the subject, volitionality refers to the subject’s intention to carry out the
action, and agency refers to its ability to do so. Volitionality and Agency mean
that the St often has animate (if not human) reference. Cain has both the intention
and ability to kill Abel (47a). In (47b) the bear may or may not have the intention
but certainly has the ability to destroy the gazebo, but Samuel in (47c) does not
intentionally fear mongooses, and the inanimate subject of (47d) cannot really be
ascribed any volitionality or agency whatsoever.

For the object, affectedness and individuation are Hopper and Thompson’s
relevant criteria. A highly transitive event has an effect on the object, most clearly
when it comes into being or is destroyed as a result of the event. Only in (47a) is
the object dramatically affected by the event. Furthermore, the object is highly indi-
viduated, which is further defined by Hopper and Thompson as having the following
properties:

Individuated Non-individuated

proper common
human, animate inanimate
concrete abstract
singular plural
count mass
referential, definite non-referential

Hopper and Thompson argue that an action is most effectively transferred to a patient
when it is individuated. A proper noun like Cain is more individuated than a common
noun like gazebo or mongoose. We focus more on the effect on humans and animate
nouns rather than inanimates like pie. Furthermore the effect on a singular noun like

88
the gazebo is more clearly differentiated than an effect on plural nouns or mass nouns
like pie, and the effect is stronger when the object is definite rather than indefinite.

A particular clause may have some or all of the features of high transitivity, and
taken together these determine how transitive the clause is. The predictions that fall
out from this analysis lead to the Transitivity Hypothesis:

If two clauses (a) and (b) in a language differ in that (a) is higher in
Transitivity according to any of the features..., then, if a concomitant
grammatical or semantic difference appears elsewhere in the clause, that
difference will also show (a) to be higher in Transitivity. (Hopper and
Thompson 1980: 255)

Note that the association between features can be in terms of morphosyntactic forms
which are associated with a particular feature or semantic features that are associated
with a particular feature. In Nepali, the restrictions on ergative marking provide the
best illustration of this hypothesis. In fact, Hopper and Thompson write that there
is “a rather typical situation in ergative languages: the canonical ergative clause
signals one, several, or all of the high-Transitivity features, while the antipassive
[they use the term to include nominative-accusative patterning in a split system]
clause signals one or more of the low-Transitivity features”(Hopper and Thompson
1980: 268) Consider the domain in which ergative marking is required in Nepali:

(1) There must be an St and O (transitive clause) - participant

(2) The predicate must have perfective aspect - aspect

Here we have two features associated with transitivity: ergative marking (indicative of
transitive clauses, thus high transitivity) and the perfective aspect of the verb. In the
language there is an obligatory association between these two morphosyntactic forms.
The Transitivity Hypothesis correctly predicts that both are associated with high

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values of transitivity. A counterexample to the Transitivity Hypothesis would be any
language in which the ergative case marker is only obligatory in imperfective clauses
and disallowed in perfective clauses, because then there would be an association
between two features with conflicting values. Now consider the domain in which
ergative marking is disallowed in Nepali.

(1) There must be only one argument (intransitive clause) - participant

(2) The predicate must be stative - kinesis

(3) OR: the St must be non-volitional and low in potency - volitionality, agency

If intransitive, ergative marking is disallowed on stative predicates, and also on un-

accusative intransitives, which have the defining property of having theme subjects
which tend to be non-volitional and low in potency. Here we have a cluster of fea-
tures that constitute obligatory nominative case on the subject, and all of them are
associated with low transitivity, as predicted by the Transitivity Hypothesis.

The Transitivity Hypothesis crucially does not make predictions about which of
these features will be linked in any particular language. But if they are linked, the
prediction is that high transitivity features pair with high transitivity features and
low transitivity features pair with low transitivity features. In some languages, as we
have seen, ergative marking is associated with highly volitional subjects. In Hindi,
we find that intransitive subjects have a volitionality alternation, with the ergative
associated with intentional actions. But that does not mean there needs to be such
an association in Nepali, and indeed there does not appear to be.

So to an extent, Hopper and Thompson have collected together many of the

features that we find associated with ergativity among the world’s languages and
provided a straightforward explanation for the common association between, for ex-
ample, ergativity and perfective aspect. Furthermore, their notion of individuation in
objects provides an explanation for many of the facts about differential object mark-

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ing in languages which have, like Nepali, an association between object marking and
human, animate, and definite referents. In some nominative-accusative languages
we find the reverse case to that of the ergative, in which O-marking associated with
low transitivity leads to an imperfective interpretation of the event. Hopper and
Thompson give this example from Finnish, in which placing the object in partitive
case (giving it a less individuated reading) leads to an imperfective interpretation:

(48) a. liikemies kirjoitti kirjeen valiokunnalle

businessman wrote letter.acc committee-to
‘The businessman wrote a letter to the committee.’ (Fromm and Sadi-
enemi 1956:120-21)

b. liikemies kirjoitti kirjett a valiokunnalle

businessman wrote letter.part committee-to
‘The businessman was writing a letter to the committee.’ (Fromm and
Sadienemi 1956:120-21)

It is tempting to consider all the facts about Nepali ergativity we have looked at
so far under this rubric. Then ergativity would simply be a marker of transitivity,
and every language with ergative marking develops associations between the ergative
and some unpredictable assortment of these high transitivity features (or else the
nominative develops associations with the low transitivity features). Over time new
feature associations might be introduced. Associations may also shift from optional
associations to obligatory associations. Perfectivity and transitivity may once have
been the hard requirements for ergative case, but now we find those associations
weakening such that ergative case is also possible in their absence if multiple other
features conspire to make the clause unusually transitive. So an intransitive clause
may get ergative marking if the St is volitional (as in an unergative). But ultimately
it is impossible to predict which of these features specifically will tend to cluster
together in any particular language.
But there are some problems with this notion. Hopper and Thompson’s Transi-

91
tivity Hypothesis does not technically make any predictions about ergative marking
when it is “optional” as in Butt and Poudel (2007)’s association between ergativity
and individual-level predication. And some of these associations in fact make the
wrong predictions.

To take the individual-level predication example, the interpretation of a predicate

as individual-level is typically atelic, while the stage-level interpretation is not. Com-
pare I drive buses as an ongoing occupation with I will drive a bus today. If ergative
marking in Nepali is associated with individual-level interpretations, then we have a
high transitivity feature (ergativity) paired with a low transitivity feature (atelicity).

Secondly, if we are to interpret Li (2007)’s use of the term telicity as equivalent to

the way the term is used in Hopper and Thompson, then we have another apparent
counterexample to the Transitivity Hypothesis. Li argues that, among Nepali intran-
sitive unergative predicates, there is a split between those which are telic (like āunu
‘come’) and those which are atelic (like nācnu ‘dance’). The telic verbs (which are
a feature of high transitivity) are specifically those which require the nominative (a
feature of low transitivity), and it is optional elsewhere.11

Even more problematic than the previous examples is the apparent association
between animacy and ergativity, which goes the opposite direction we would expect:
inanimate subjects are more likely to be marked with the ergative, even though they
are low in agency (a feature of low transitivity). This will be relevant to the discussion
of markedness below.

Argument Proto-Roles

The influential formulation of Dowty (1991) provides an approach to many of these

same issues from a different perspective, that of the relationship between grammatical
11. One way around this problem would be to reject the notion that telicity is the relevant factor
here, but rather that the reason that verbs like āunu ‘come’ and jānu disallow ergative marking is
that they are in fact unaccusative in Nepali. This will be my argument in section .

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structure and argument roles. Dowty notes that the traditionally proposed thematic
roles (Agent, Theme, Patient, Experiencer Instrumental, etc.) have unclear bound-
aries and thus a multiplicity of definitions and formulations. Rather than defining a
set of discrete thematic roles, Dowty introduces two proto-roles, the Proto-Agent
Role and the Proto Patient Role. He approaches thematic roles from the perspec-
tive of argument selection, meaning that roles are defined by the set of entailments
on a group of predicates with respect to one of their arguments (Figure 3.4).

Agent Proto-Role Patient Proto-Role

volitional involvement in the event or state undergoes change of state
sentience (and/or perception) incremental theme
causing an event or change of state causally affected by another participant
in another participant
movement (relative to the position stationary relative to the movement
of another participant) of another participant
exists independently of the event does not exist independently
named by the verb of the event, or not at all

Figure 3.4: Dowty (1991)’s Proto-roles

The proto-role is a cluster concept, which means that any particular argument
may exhibit some but not all of the features that define the proto-role. A particular
argument will have properties of the proto-role to a greater or lesser extent. In this
way, Dowty’s approach is similar to Hopper and Thompson’s conception of Transi-
tivity, because in both cases any particular form will fall along a cline from more to
less prototypical. Dowty writes the following in justification of cluster concepts for
thematic roles:

Discrete feature decomposition has its proper place in syntax, morphol-

ogy, and phonology, because these domains are aspects of the ‘coding
system’ of language at various levels and therefore in principle discrete.
But semantic distinctions like these entailments ultimately derive from
distinctions in kinds of events found ‘out there’in the real world: they

93
 are natural (physical) classifications of event, and/or those classifications
that are significant to human life. There is no reason to believe that all
such classes must have discrete boundaries. (Dowty 1991: 575)

This leads to a prediction about which arguments will surface as the grammatical
subject and grammatical direct object for a particular predicate in a language:

Argument Selection Principle: In predicates with grammatical sub-

ject and object, the argument for which the predicate entails the greatest
number of Proto-Agent properties will be lexicalized as the subject of
the predicate; the argument having the greatest number of Proto-Patient
entailments will be lexicalized as the direct object. (Dowty 1991: 576)

As an illustration of Agent and Patient Proto-Role entailments, consider how the

following sentence is expressed in English and Nepali:

(49) sangita-le tyo ciṭṭhi haat-le lekh-i

sangita-erg that letter hand-instr write-perf.3.sg.f
‘Sangita wrote that letter by hand.’ [BB]

The arguments of the predicate of (49), write, have nearly all of the entailments for
Agent and Patient Proto-roles respectively. Sangita intentionally causes the event
which leads to the change of state of the argument, and she exists independently of
this event. ‘That letter’ is created as a result of the event, undergoing a definite change
of state as a result of the action of the other participant. It is also an Incremental
Theme, a term Dowty introduces to describe the situation in which subparts of
the event correspond to subparts of the argument. In other words, if the letter
writing process is halfway complete, then the letter is halfway finished. The letter
isn’t completely written until the event of letter writing is complete. This can be
contrasted with “push the cart,” which does not have this property.

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 The verb ‘write’ is a good example of a verb for which the arguments follow most of
their respective entailments, and so languages are expected to lexicalize the arguments
in a stable and predictable way: with Sangita as the grammatical subject and “that
letter” as the grammatical direct object. Under Hopper and Thompson’s formulation
this clause is highly transitive, but for Dowty the arguments are very clear examples
of Agent and Patient Proto-roles. Now contrast this with the following sentences in
English and Nepali:

(50) keṭā-lāi ekdam.ai dukha lāg-yo

boy-acc very.emph sad feel-perf.3.sg
‘The boy was very sad.’ [AG]

“The boy” in this construction has an Experiencer theta role. These types of con-
structions are known to be lexicalized in different ways in different languages, and for
having multiple lexicalizations within the same language (compare, for example, the
English perception constructions “I like this”/“This pleases me”, “I fear this”/“This
frightens me”, etc.).12 This is explicable in terms of Proto-roles: “sadness” and the
“boy” have about an equal claim to Agent and Patient Proto-role: “the boy” is sen-
tient and perceptive, but undergoes a change of state and is causally affected by the
event, while “sadness” causes the change in the other participant but is nonvolitional
and non-sentient. When there is no clear differentiation between Agent and Patient
Proto-role, then either or both may be lexicalized as the subject/object in a given
language; some languages like English take “the boy” to be a subject, and other
languages like Nepali take “the boy” to be an object.13
Many of the terms used for specific theta roles can be defined by which of the
Agent or Patient Proto-role properties are entailments (Dowty 1991: 577). Thus:
12. As discussed in (Postal 1970), among others.

13. More precisely, the Nepali construction treats the subject keṭā-lāi (boy-acc) as an object in
some ways (obligatory accusative marking) and a subject in other ways (the typical word order is
Experiencer-Stimulus-Verb, suggesting that the experiencer is a subject given S-O-V word order.
The object dukhā cannot take ergative case.

95
 (51) Agent = [+Causation] or [+Volition]
Experiencer = [+Sentience, -Volition, -Causation]
Theme (typically) = [+Change +Incremental-Theme, +Dependent-Existence,
+Causally-Affected]
Patient = [+Change +Incremental-Theme, +Dependent-Existence, -Causally-
Affected]
Instrument = [+Causation, +Movement, -Volition, -Sentience]

Dowty emphasizes that Proto-roles are separate from grammatical forms, and it is
clear that the Nepali grammatical postpositions -lāi and -le do not straightforwardly
correspond to arguments with Patient and Agent Proto-roles. If -le simply marked
the “Agent Proto-role” of the sentence, then it would not be able to vary with the
nominative.

However, these grammatical postpositions may lexicalize specific properties of the

Proto-roles. Note that -lāi is optional on direct objects but obligatory on indirect
objects (as in ma sitā-lāi kitā dinchu “I give Sita a book”). Perhaps then -lāi marks
the object which has the properties associated with being a source (-Movement),
which is necessarily the case for indirect objects.

For the ergative, this raises the possibility that -le marks the same features whether
it is on an instrumental argument or as an ergative. This is because an instrument
has a subset of the properties of a subject: it includes causation and movement but
not volition and sentience. This is the approach I will pursue in chapter 6 below.

Causal Structure

Dowty directly compares his approach to the Transitivity approach of Hopper and
Thompson:

96
 Hopper & Thompson view transitivity as a property that a clause can
possess to a greater or lesser degree, whereas I think the transitivity of
a clause can be derived by summing the independently needed agentivity
and patientivity counts of the arguments. (Dowty 1991: 599)

These two approaches deal with many of the same morphosyntactic structure and
semantic features. Dowty writes that “the meaning of a telic predicate is a homomor-
phism from its (structured) theme argument denotations into a (structured) domain
of events”(Dowty 1991: 567). This means that the denotation of an object may deter-
mine the aspect of the clause, as is fundamentally the case for an Incremental Theme.
This interdependence of object and verbal aspect, as discussed in Verkuyl (1972), is
present in the following examples:

(52) a. Janeane drank the beer. (‘perfective’)

b. Janeane drank beer. (‘durative’)

When the object is definite, the clause is interpreted as perfective; Janeane drank
the entire beer. When it is indefinite, the aspect is durative; she drank some unspeci-
fied amount of beer. Dowty conceptualizes the difference in terms of the properties of
the arguments (Dowty 1991: 567). In (52a) “the beer”, being definite, is interpreted
as an incremental theme, with the subparts of the event of drinking being mapped
onto the subparts of the amount of beer drunk. Thus in (52a) there is a telic interpre-
tation rather than the atelic, durative interpretation that arises with the indefinite
mass noun “beer” in (52b).

Under Hopper and Thompson’s analysis, (52a) is higher in transitivity than (52b)
because “the beer” is a more individuated object than “beer.” One feature of high
transitivity (an individuated object) is obligatorily correlated with another feature of
high transitivity (telic interpretation of the clause).

These two approaches represent two ways of looking at the same gradient concept

97
of transitivity, which is expressed in full by the grammatical machinery associated
with arguments as well as that of predicates. With regards to Nepali, Anderson
(1977) argues that the ergative case in modern Indo-Aryan languages is part of the
machinery for representing verbal aspect.14 This intuition was shared by Verbeke
(2011) for Nepali, who argued that ergative marking imparts a sense of completedness
to an otherwise imperfective clause.15

Croft (1991)’s notion of causal structure unifies these two perspectives of argument
proto-roles and prototypical transitive events. Croft (1991: 197) takes the fundamen-
tal semantic property for determining argument realization to be the causal structure
of events, conceived as the transmission of force between participants along a causal
chain.

(53) Sue broke the coconut for Greg with a hammer. (Adapted from Croft 2012:
214)

Each participant in the clause is associated with a particular subevent, and these
subevents are linked in a causal chain representing transmission of force from the
14. “Normally we think of verbal categories such as tense and aspect as marked on the verb, and
not (partly) in the NP, but this is by no means necessary.”(Anderson 1977: 336)

15. This event-argument duality is reminiscent of the wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics:

But what is light really? Is it a wave or a shower of photons? There seems no likelihood
for forming a consistent description of the phenomena of light by a choice of only one
of the two languages. It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and
sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind
of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them
fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do. (Einstein and Infeld
1961: 262-263)

98
initiation of an event to its endpoint. Thus Sue acts on the hammer by grasping it,
the hammer acts on the coconut by hitting it, the coconut is affected by the event in
changing its state from broken to unbroken, and the event ultimately benefits Greg.
The verb directly profiles the portion of the event that begins when Sue initiates it,
the hammer (as an instrumental) enacts the event, and it ends with the effect on the
coconut (represented by the solid arrow). The oblique argument “for Greg” profiles
the further effect that the event has on Greg (represented by the dashed arrow).

The rules for argument realization relate to the position of arguments along this
causal chain. As with Dowty, the manifestation of a particular argument in a par-
ticular role relates to gradient properties of two macro-roles (Subject and Object).
Croft’s rules have the advantage of also making predictions for antecedent obliques,
which are non-core arguments implicated in transmitting the force, and subsequent
obliques, which are implicated in receiving it.

(54) Argument Linking Rules (Croft 2012: 207)

a. The verbal profile is delimited by Subject and Object (if any)

b. Subject is antecedent to the Object in the causal chain:

SBJ → OBJ

c. An Antecedent Oblique is antecedent to the Object in the causal chain; a

Subsequent Oblique is subsequent to the Object in the causal chain:
A.OBL → OBJ → S.OBL

d. Incorporated arguments are between Subject and Object in the causal

chain:
SBJ → INCORP → OBJ

This conception of argument realization in terms of causal structure is useful

for our purposes because it decomposes the properties of arguments as they relate
to a prototypical transitive event. In particular, a prototypical subject is an entity

99
which instigates, enacts, and completes an event which has an effect on an object.
An instrument is an antecedent oblique which shares some (but not all) of these
properties: it is involved in enacting (and possibly completing) the event, but not in
instigating or controlling it.

This forms the basis of my theory of ergative marking in Nepali: the -le marker
has the same meaning as an instrumental or as an ergative, and that meaning can be
described as an Effector of the event. Under this formulation, a prototypical subject
is both an Effector and an Instigator, but an instrument is just an Effector. It profiles
the enacting of the event but not its instigation. I discuss this more thoroughly in
section 6.1.

This usage of the term Effector is somewhat similar to its usage in Role and Ref-
erence Grammar, but the difference is that it does not necessarily represent a rarified
semantic role (Van Valin and Wilkins 1996). Van Valin and Wilkins (1996) empha-
size the distinction between properties of an Agent and properties of an Effector, and
argues that Agent properties are pragmatic in nature. Furthermore, Holisky (1987)
has a similar but inverse analysis for ergative/nominative alternations in Tsova-Tush.
Ergative marking in this language correlates particularly with properties of the Agent
(volitionality, instigation), but not the Effector properties.

Croft (2012) further refines the causal chain by introducing aspectual structure to
each subevent. The result is a three-dimensional representation of causal-aspectual
structure along the causal chain. I employ a simplified version of Croft’s causal struc-
ture in discussing the relationship between ergative marking and aspectual properties
of the event in chapter 6.4.

This unified conception of transitivity and argument realization is an important

component of the analysis in chapter 6. A second important component is the mech-
anism of semantic markedness.

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3.2.5 Markedness

The concept of markedness was developed under the structuralist theory of the
Prague School, and the concept has taken on a wide and varied set of meanings
and functions across functionalist, generative, and cognitive theories of linguistics
(Battistella 1996, Horn 2001, De Lacy 2006). The terminology was initially applied
to phonology in Trubetzkoy (1931), and to semantics by Jakobson (1932) [Jakobson
(2011a)]. Markedness is an important theoretical underpinning of early work on
ergativity in Dixon (1972, 1979) and Silverstein (1976).

The fundamental observation of markedness is that oppositions in language and

cognition tend to be asymmetrical. Opposing values are not of equal status. Roman
Jakobson describes the terms in the following way:

One of two mutually opposite categories is “marked” while the other is

“unmarked.” The general meaning of a marked category states the pres-
ence of a certain (whether positive or negative) property A; the general
meaning of the corresponding unmarked category states nothing about
the presence of A, and is used chiefly, but not exclusively, to indicate the
absence of A. (Jakobson 1957: 47)

Gender marking is a commonly cited example of semantic markedness. In a semantic

opposition between masculine and feminine, the feminine is typically marked and
the masculine unmarked. Thus for many animal pairs like fox/vixen, lion/lioness,
horse/mare, wolf /she-wolf, the masculine form is the general term for the species as
a whole. It is the form that is used when the gender of the animal is unknown or
indefinite. It does not explicitly signal that the referent is masculine.

The feminine form by contrast can only refer to a feminine referent. Thus the
feminine form has a more complex, narrower meaning. It is often the case that the

101
marked meaning is associated with a marked morphological form: for English, we find
this with feminine affixes like -ess. In semantic markedness, a marked morphological
form often varies with the absence of marking, or zero sign (Jakobson 1939, [Jakobson
(2011b)]).

In Jakobson’s terms, vixen is marked relative to fox because it signals the prop-
erty [feminine]. But fox does not explicitly signal the opposing property [masculine].
Rather, it is unmarked (non-signalization of [feminine]). This is the general mean-
ing (Gesamtbedeutung) of the unmarked term. Jakobson also notes that there is
usually, but not always, a narrow meaning (Sonderbedeutung) of the unmarked
term: signaling the absence of the given property. In this case, because it is not
feminine, fox is interpreted as masculine. Waugh (1982) refers to these as the “zero-
interpretation” and the “minus-interpretation” respectively.16

Jakobson was also the first to apply markedness theory to case in his analysis of
the Russian case system (Jakobson 1936, [Jakobson (2011a)] Jakobson 1957, Chvany
1984). He considered the Nominative case in Russian to be unmarked relative to the
Accusative. The relevant property in the Nominative/Accusative opposition is [direc-
tionality], in which the Accusative denotes the entity at which the action is directed,
and the Nominative is unspecified. In a second opposition, the Nominative case is
unmarked relative to the Instrumental. Here the relevant property is whether or not
the denoted entity is peripheral to the action. Jakobson expressed the eight Rus-
sian cases by whether they were marked or unmarked with respect to three features
[marginal], [quantification], and [directionality].

He argued that for ergative languages the reverse is true, with the marked subject

16. The property signaled by the marked term is an entailment, whereas there is some ambiguity
in whether the minus-interpretation of the unmarked term entails the opposing property or merely
implicates it. The distinction is between a grammaticalized opposition (e.g. ergative marking in
perfective Nepali clauses) and a variable pragmatic opposition (ergative marking in imperfective
Nepali clauses). This will be discussed in detail in the Discussion section.

102
Figure 3.5: General vs. Narrow Meaning of Unmarked; based on Andrews (1990:
154)

indicating a property of affecting another entity with an action.17 For these languages
the object is unmarked.

Markedness is frequently correlated with distributional frequency. The unmarked

form is said to be more frequent within a language and/or within a particular gram-

17. The term ‘ergative’ was not yet in common usage. He refers to “languages (for example
Basque and the Northern Caucasian languages) in which the aforementioned most prominent func-
tion of the N, that is, that of the subject of a transitive action, becomes the only function of that
case.”(Jakobson 2011a: 71) As discussed in the preliminary section, early Western descriptions of
alignment patterns often described the overall construction as passive, and referred to the case
marking on St as ‘instrumental’ or ‘agentive.’

103
matical domain, and to be typologically more frequent. It is correlated with im-
plicational universals, and in generative linguistics the unmarked is considered to
be the default form and as such is linked with childhood language acquisition with
the unmarked form being acquired earliest. There is considerable disagreement over
the extent to which these multiple aspects of markedness should be considered defini-
tional or epiphenomenal (Battistella 1996, Andrews 1990, Croft 2003) or even whether
markedness is a useful concept to describe these phenomena (Haspelmath 2006).

Battistella (1996) defines markedness simply in terms of an opposition involving

a distinctive property, in which markedness imposes an asymmetry by signaling the
presence of that property for one end of the opposition, and not signaling the presence
of that property at the other end. All of the other aspects of markedness arise from
this basic asymmetry. Battistella summarizes those aspects which have figured into
various theories of markedness (Figure 3.6).

Signalization of A Nonsignalization of A
specific meaning general meaning
conceptual complexity conceptual simplicity
narrowly defined broadly defined
syncretized nonsyncretized
subset superset
figure ground
abnormal normal
nonprototypical prototypical
less frequent more frequent
implying implied
low valued high valued
nonneutralizable neutralizable
nonoptimal optimal
overt expression zero expression

Figure 3.6: Aspects of Marked and Unmarked Forms (Battistella 1996: 71)

Theoretical descriptions of split ergativity make use of three extensions of marked-

ness theory. The first of these is the Markedness Hierarchy. While markedness

104
theory was originally formulated only in terms of binary oppositions, many gram-
matical phenomena can be conceived along a scale from unmarked to marked. Croft
(2003) lists a few these hierarchies:

(1) Number: singular < plural < dual < trial/paucal

(2) Grammatical Relations: subject < direct object < indirect object <
oblique

(3) Agency/Nominal: 1pro/2pro < 3pro < proper names < human s < non-
human animate < inanimate

The value on the left is unmarked, and markedness increases incrementally towards
the right. The third of these examples will be particularly relevant to split-ergative
languages in which the split is conditioned by the semantics of the NP. Croft notes
that this extension to include hierarchies requires markedness to be a relative property
rather than a binary one (Croft 2003: 111). However, a hierarchy can also be repre-
sented as a succession of multiple binary features, as in Silverstein (1976)’s original
formulation of the Nominal hierarchy, which will be the topic of the next section.

The second extension of markedness theory that is relevant to our purpose is the
concept of the Prototype. A prototype category is characterized by a collection of
properties, but none of these properties alone is necessary or sufficient to distinguish
a member of this category. Rather, there are core members of this category which
have all or most of the relevant properties, and peripheral members which share fewer
of these properties. The boundaries of a prototype are fuzzy or variable, but there
nevertheless tend to be definitively nonprototypical entities which are unequivocally
excluded (Croft 2003: 125).

We have already seen two examples of prototypes in the Transitivity section of this
chapter. Hopper and Thompson (1980) define Transitivity as a prototype concept.
By conceptualizing transitivity in terms of a collection of properties, they allow for

105
individual clauses to fall along a scale of transitivity. Dowty (1991)’s conception
of Proto-roles, in which the Agent and Patient proto-roles are defined by a series of
entailments assigned by the verb, is also a prototype conceptualization. For peripheral
cases, in which a particular participant has an approximately equal number of Agent
and Patient entailments, one finds crosslinguistic variation and alternate strategies
for grammaticalizing the participant as subject or object within a single language.
Thus any particular participant falls along a spectrum of Agent-ness or Patient-ness
depending upon how closely they share the collection of relevant properties.

In the domain of participant case marking, it is necessary to consider the pro-

totypical subject cluster concept and prototypical object cluster concept. As
discussed below, there is debate over properties in these categories, particularly with
respect to animacy and definiteness.

The third relevant concept is the much-disputed role of Markedness Reversal in

the description of marking patterns (Andrews 1990: 147). Markedness reversal is “the
phenomenon whereby a marked context reverses the normal markedness values of the
terms of an opposition.”(Shapiro 1983: 93) In certain contexts, the given markedness
values are reversed.

Recall the example of gender marking in animal names. Note that in English,
the terms for many common farm animals appear to be exceptions to the generaliza-
tion that the feminine of the pair is marked and the masculine is unmarked.18 For
cow/bull, chicken/hen, and goose/gander it is the feminine of the pair which is the
term generalized to the species as a whole. This can be explained by context. The
female of the species has a broader range of uses on a farm, being used for milk,
eggs, and meat. Here it is the masculine property which is marked in relation to the
unmarked feminine. Markedness is relative to what is expected in a given context,
and this is mediated by social norms. Thus Waugh (1982) notes that [feminine] is the
18. This distinction was pointed out to me by Larry Horn (p.c.).

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marked property for doctor but [masculine] is the marked property for nurse.19

Proponents of markedness reversal argue that these reversals also take place ac-
cording to grammatical context. This is particularly relevant to Differential Object
Marking and its relation to Differential Subject Marking, for which what is marked
for a subject is the polar opposite to what is marked for an object.

The assumption is that there is a prototypical subject argument and a prototypical

object argument, and case-marking is used to discriminate marked examples.

So an object will be marked when it has properties that are not object-like, and a
subject will be marked when it has properties that are not subject-like. When marking
is conditioned by the semantics of the argument noun phrase, splits in marking will
fall along the Nominal hierarchy, which is depicted in the figure below.

The Nominal Hierarchy

The Nominal Hierarchy is a markedness hierarchy relevant to the distribution of

ergative marking (on subjects) and accusative marking (on objects) in split-ergative

19. “If we take another opposition in English - namely that exemplified by woman∼man and
she∼he - the protests of feminists against language use are especially aimed at the ‘slipperiness’ of
man, he, and at the swing from their use as the representative of the category (man is a thinking
animal or he who hesitates is lost = zero-interpretation), to their use for the non-woman part of the
species (one man and two women came to see you or he’s a nice person = minus interpretation),
to their use in the plus-interpretation (everyone in New York State is entitled to an abortion if he
wants it), to unclear uses that may be interpreted in either way but for cultural reasons tend to carry
the minus-interpretation (chairman, in the context of an academic department). Furthermore, the
swing from zero-interpretation to minus interpetation may take place in the midst of one sentence:
cf, man is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and to marry the woman of his
choice.”(Waugh 1982: 305) In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir critiques the conceptualization
of gender in society in what is essentially the terminology of markedness: “The categories ‘masculine’
and ‘feminine’ appear as symmetrical in a formal way on town hall records or identification papers.
The relation of the two sexes is not that of two electrical poles: the man represents both the positive
and the neuter...Woman is the negative, to such a point that any determination is imputed to her
as a limitation, without reciprocity...alterity is the fundamental category of human thought. No
group ever defines itself as One without immediately setting up the Other opposite itself...This
is the fundamental characteristic of woman: she is the Other at the heart of a whole whose two
components are necessary to each other.”(De Beauvoir and Parshley 1953: 5-9) De Beauvoir was
influenced by the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss’ application of markedness theory to human cultures.
I take up this discussion of gendered language and markedness in the Discussions chapter in the
section on Gradient Markedness in English Gender Marking.

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or split-accusative languages (as well as inverse marking languages).20 NPs that fall
along the left side of the scale are considered to be more natural agents, and NPs
that fall along the right side of the scale are more natural patients.

Figure 3.7: The Nominal Hierarchy as represented in Dixon (1994: 85)

The two-way scale represents a markedness reversal: first and second person pro-
nouns are unmarked as subjects but marked as objects. Inanimate common nouns
are unmarked as objects but marked as subjects. The scale is composed of multiple
interacting semantic features that define a prototypical subject and object.21

The idea is that ergative marking will be found on marked (i.e. less natural)
subjects, and accusative marking on marked objects. So if a language has an ergative
split based on the semantics of the NP, ergative marking will fall along the right side
of the split. Dixon takes the Pama-Nyungan language Kuku-Yalanji for an example.
20. This is also frequently referred to as the “Silverstein Hierarchy,” after (Silverstein 1976).
Silverstein refers to the Agentive and Patientive Hierarchies depending on the marking, Dixon (1994)
calls it the Nominal Hierarchy, and Du Bois (1987) calls it the Potentiality of Agency Scale.

21. Animacy and Definiteness are particularly relevant. Silverstein’s binary system of features
included [1st person], [2nd person], [proper noun], [animate], and [plural]. Silverstein puts the second
person at the top of his hierarchy. Dixon provides evidence that the first person pronouns are treated
as the most natural subjects in a majority of languages, although many Algonquian languages and
the Tibeto-Burman language Jyarong apparently rank second person pronouns higher (Dixon 1994:
90).

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In this language the ergative case marker is found on the St for all NPs except local
pronouns. Local pronouns, also commonly referred to as Speech Act Participants
(SAP), are first and second person pronouns. The O is case-marked only when it is
a first or second pronoun, and so the same split between local arguments and every
other argument conditions ergative marking and accusative marking. Because first
and second pronouns are very unprototypical objects, accusative marking will always
fall on the left side of the split.

If there is both an accusative split and an ergative split in a language, it may be

that the two case-marking systems are completely independent of each other. The
marking of St and O are then essentially independent parameters and it is thus quite
possible to have both ergative and accusative marking in the same clause. Another
possibility is that case marking of one participant is affected by the semantics of
the second participant. For example, the ergative may be marked only when the O
outranks the St in “subject-ness” according to the Nominal hierarchy (as in the English
sentence The boulder struck me). This goes back to the theory of a discriminative
function of ergative case, under which it is needed to sort out unlikely subjects. So
a full investigation into the conditioning factors of ergative case marking in a split
system must take into account the possibility of an interaction between the semantics
of the O and the St .

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language that features both an ergative and accusative

split. The accusative split resembles the accusative split in Hindi and Nepali: objects
are obligatorily case-marked if they are animate and definite and cannot be case-
marked when they are inanimate. There is an ergative split by perfective aspect:

(55) a. to chimṇī bagha-to

he.nom sparrow see-pres.m.sg
‘He sees a sparrow.’

b. tyā-ne chimṇī baghit-lī

he.obl-erg sparrow see-perf.m.sg

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 Figure 3.8: Ergative and accusative splits in four languages

‘He saw a sparrow.’

There is a second ergative split between local and nonlocal pronouns.22 First and
second pronouns are not overtly marked as ergative in opposition to the nominative:

(56) a. mī chimṇī bagha-to

I.nom.m sparrow see-pres.m.sg
‘I see a sparrow.’

b. mī chimṇī baghit-lī
I.nom.m sparrow see-pres.m.sg
‘I saw a sparrow.’

The nominal hierarchy is also relevant to languages that do not have split-ergative
alignment. Morphologically distinctive accusative/dative marking in English is lim-
22. Note that this split is only relevant to the morphological form of the pronoun. Another way
of describing this is that there is a syncretism between nominative and ergative case for first and
second pronouns. However, as we shall see in the next section, there is independent evidence for
covert ergative case that is nonetheless unmarked on the pronoun itself.

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ited to the pronominal domain: I /me, we/us, she/her, he/him, and archaically
thou/thee and you/ye. Furthermore, there is an animacy distinction within the
pronominal domain: the inanimate third person it does not have a separate accusative
form. Nominative/ergative distinctions tend to collapse in the plural form of pronouns
(Silverstein 1976, Dixon 1994: 92), which will be relevant to the discussion of ergative
patterning in Indo-Aryan languages in the next section.23

The Nepali alignment is superficially quite similar to that of Marathi. The ac-
cusative split is similar: although accusative marking is somewhat optional on inani-
mate common nouns, it is obligatory on first and second person pronouns. There is
also a split conditioned by perfectivity. But ergative marking is possible for all types
of NPs, and there are distinctive ergative forms for all pronouns.24

On the other hand, we have seen some evidence that the Nominal Hierarchy is
relevant to ergative marking in Nepali. Li (2007) argues that inanimate subjects are
obligatorily marked with the ergative even in the imperfective domain. Even if this
is not always the case, it appears to be a strong tendency. Furthermore, some of my
consultants have expressed the intuition that the ergative is less common on first per-
son pronouns. Perhaps the Nominal Hierarchy is not expressed in Nepali in terms of
categorical splits but rather in terms of increasing likelihood of usage: this would pre-
dict that ergative-marked first and second person pronouns would be proportionally
less common than their nominative counterparts, and ergative-marked inanimates
would be proportionally more common than their nominative counterparts.

In our corpus analysis in the next chapter, we will need to look for answers to the
following questions about Nepali ergative case marking:

23. In any case they/them does constitute an outright exception to these generalizations because
there is a distinct accusative form even though the referent may be both plural and inanimate. This
is compared to the singular inanimate pronoun it, which has only one form.

24. Many of them even have separate oblique forms that are the reflexes of inflection in previous
stages of the language: two examples are ma/maile (as opposed to ma-le) in the first person singular,
u/us-le (as opposed to u-le) for the third person singular mid-honorific.

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 (1) Do we find nominative/ergative alternations on either side of the Nominal Hi-
erarchy?

(2) What are their relative proportions in nominative/ergative alternations and do

they align with the predictions of the Nominal Hierarchy?

(3) Is ergative marking on St affected by the semantics of O, either absolutely (if

O is high on the scale) or relatively (if O is higher than St on the scale)?

A Formal Implementation of the Nominal Hierarchy

Optimality Theory (OT) is a theoretical model in which observed linguistic forms

arise from the interaction of conflicting constraints. OT has been widely applied to
the field of phonology since its formulation by Prince and Smolensky (1993). Aissen
(2003) introduced a formal implementation of Differential Object Marking in syntactic
OT which has been applied to ergative marking as well.

Markedness in Aissen’s model is formulated as a competition between two conflict-

ing constraints: iconicity (that a marked meaning should be represented by a marked
form) and economy (that case-marking should be avoided if it is unnecessary). So
in an accusative marker is not needed in an unmarked context (say, an object with
inanimate reference). A marked context (say, an first person pronoun) is iconically
represented with a marked form. The economy condition is implemented with a con-
straint *strucc which penalizes any form with an overtly marked case. The iconicity
condition is implemented with a constraint (*0c ), which penalizes the absence of a
case feature, conjoined with other constraints which represent markedness features in
a scale.

The Nominal Hierarchy represents a prototype Subject and prototype Object,

and the two clustered features relevant to its expression in Aissen’s formulation are
Definiteness and Animacy. These two features are represented by separate scales
because languages rank animacy and definiteness in different ways. Under Aissen’s

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formulation, the prototypical object is inanimate and indefinite, and an object is most
likely to be marked when it deviates from these properties.
These are the two scales:

(1) Animacy scale: HUMAN > ANIMATE > INANIMATE

(2) Definiteness scale: PRONOUN > PROPER NOUN > DEFINITE > IN-
DEFINITE SPECIFIC > NON-SPECIFIC

These scales are implemented as constraint hierarchies, which are a series of con-
straints which are always ordered in the same way with respect to each other. The
ordering of the subject constraints (su) is precisely the reverse of the ordering of the
object constraints (obj). These are the subject and object animacy scales:

(1) *su/inan >> *su/anim >> *su/hum

(2) *obj/hum >> *obj/inan >> *obj/anim

And this is the subject definiteness scale and the object definiteness scale:

(1) *su/nspec >> *su/spec >> *su/def >> *su/pn >> *su/pro

(2) *obj/pro >> *obj/pn >> *obj/def >> *obj/spec >> *obj/nspec

In the overall constraint ranking, the position of the economy condition *strucc
determines the ergative and accusative splits. If, for example, *strucc is ranked
between *su/nspec and *su/spec, you have a system where ergative marking is
obligatory on inanimate subjects and disallowed elsewhere.
Many languages with DOM use both animacy and definiteness to determine case
marking. However, languages differ in the relative ranking between them. The gen-
eralization for Hindi, as we have seen, is that case marking is obligatory for NPs with
human reference (including pronouns and proper nouns), disallowed on nondefinite
inanimates, and optional elsewhere.

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 Figure 3.9: Hindi Differential Object Marking; based on (Aissen 2003: 459)

Aissen conjoins each of the constraints in the respective animacy and definiteness
scales to create a partial ordering of constraints that depicts in a two dimensional
space where splits can occur. Figure (3.9) depicts this space for Hindi object marking.
The red and blue lines depict where in these suite of constraints the economy condition
is placed to allow for regions of required marking and required non-marking. The
space in between is where case marking is optional in Hindi. Aissen notes that where
case marking is optional, its presence is determined by other factors like telicity or
topicality (Aissen 2003: fn.24). But within the model, optionality is operationalized
through optional reranking of the constraint *strucc .

Aissen’s model has a number of attractive features. It can faithfully describe

the interaction of definiteness and animacy in most DOM languages. It can also

114
straightforwardly model language change in terms of shifting of constraint rankings
over time. It makes predictions about the types of systems which could exist according
to principles of markedness and the proposed markedness hierarchies. And it defines
subregions of optionality between obligatory and disallowed case marking.

In principle, Aissen’s implementation accounts for ergative marking in an entirely

analogous way. The partial ordering depicted in Figure (3.9) is simply turned up-
side down such that human pronouns are the least marked subjects and inanimate
nonspecific common nouns are the least marked subjects.

However, Næss (2004) notes that Differential Subject Marking (or Differential
Agent Marking) is not precisely the reverse of DOM: animacy and definiteness are
not the only relevant features, and they do not interact in the same way.

This is apparent from Deo and Sharma (2006), which implements Aissen’s model
for ergative marking in modern Indo-Aryan languages and formalizes the various
ergative patterns found in these languages in terms of OT constraints. Deo and
Sharma compare Hindi, Nepali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, and Bengali (Bangla),
and their model shows how the varied systems in these languages could arise from
the Middle Indo-Aryan pattern.

To do this, they employ a definiteness scale that ranks first and second pronouns
over third person pronouns to capture the fact that languages like Marathi do not
have an ergative case distinction in the first and second person. All of these languages
have a perfective/imperfective split, so they stipulate a constraint against ergative
case in imperfective clauses. Because languages like Gujarati have lost the distinc-
tion between ergative and nominative plural pronouns, they also include a plurality
constraint. They also include constraints to distinguish overt case-marking of the
ergative from inherent case. They have a separate group of constraints to model
the verbal agreement system in each of these languages: agreement may be with the
subject, the object, or neither (default marking for languages in which agreement is

115
blocked when the argument is case-marked). For Nepali, their model captures the
typologically unusual fact that ergative case marking on the subject does not block
subject agreement (as it does for every other Indo-Aryan language with ergative mor-
phology). However, they do not discuss the variable ergativity in the imperfective of
Nepali or the effect of animacy on ergative marking.

Thus to capture the basic facts for modern Indo-Aryan languages it is necessary
to include and combine constraints that are based on multiple semantic features. Deo
and Sharma (2006) is a good illustration of how the interaction of multiple features
defines a complex typology of ergative marking. As noted by Du Bois (1987), Li
(2007), and McGregor (2010), a full theory of ergative-marking must take into account
interactions with the semantics of the verb as well as potential interactions with the
semantics of the O.25

In other words, the conceptualization of the subject prototype solely in terms of

animacy and definiteness is inadequate. Furthermore, the subject prototype is not
simply a reversal of the object prototype, and proper treatment of ergative marking
must include a more multifaceted prototype like Dowty’s Proto-roles or Hopper and
Thompson’s Transitivity, which would presumably be more difficult to adapt into an
OT framework.

Markedness Extensions: Prototypes, Reversals, and Hierarchies

The traditional conceptualization of the Nominal hierarchy relies on markedness re-

versal. In the context of a first person pronoun, ergative case is unmarked; in the
context of an inanimate common noun, ergative case is marked. The St prototype is
animate and definite, and the O prototype is inanimate and indefinite.

25. Another issue, pointed out to me by Larry Horn, is the fact that both objects and subjects
may be elided in Nepali (as well as Hindi and Marathi. So when a core argument is overt, it is
already marked in opposition to a null term. Thus there could be considered a three-way opposition
between elided, nominative, and accusative-marked objects.

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 If we take these simply as expressions of animacy and definiteness, Nepali ergativ-
ity does not entirely accord with the predicted results. On the one hand, the ergative
marker is more common with inanimate subjects (following the prediction of the an-
imacy scale) and less common with first person pronouns (following the prediction of
the definiteness scale). However, where it varies with the nominative, the prediction
is that the ergative form would be more found more commonly on indefinite referents.
It should have low prominence. In fact, as will be discussed in the section on Dis-
course Prominence, the marker seems to correlate with prominence, topicality, and
definite interpretations of quantifiers.

Hopper and Thompson’s model makes the opposite prediction from Aissen on the
prototypical object: being highly individuated, it is animate and definite. Hopper
and Thompson’s prototypes do not imply markedness reversal. Rather, accusative
marking signals high transitivity. So both accounts predict accusative marking on
pronouns, but for different reasons.26

Næss (2004) challenges the assumption that the prototypical object is indefinite
and inanimate. In her account, the typical direct object is highly affected by the verbal
action, and thus tends to be highly individuated (that is, singular, definite, human,
pronominal). She argues that marked individuals are more affected by the event,
and affected arguments are more likely to be individuated, thus definite and animate.
The subjects of transitive verbs are marked as controlling. Her account preserves
the markedness reversal between subject and object, but accusative marking marks
Affectedness and ergative marking marks Control.

Fauconnier (2011) provides a slightly different picture that is also based upon the
26. “Hopper and Thompson (1980) suggest a different interpretation of DOM, one which is also
iconic (see also Magier 1987). In their account, DOM registers a high degree of clausal transitivity
on one of the arguments of the clause. Various factors contribute to degree of transitivity, but one
of them is individuation of the object... This account and the one proposed here (which is based
conceptually on the approaches cited in the text) will lead to similar predictions about DOM... The
Hopper and Thompson approach is not related to markedness reversal and therefore does not, as
far as I can tell, make predictions about discriminate subject marking systems.”(Aissen 2003: fn.4)

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conceptual meaning of the ergative and accusative markers. She notes that cross-
linguistically many languages simply do not allow inanimates in subject position, and
others restrict possible agents to “independent instigators,” meaning that they are the
main cause of the event. Languages with ergative splits based on animacy are rare,
and ergative marking generally correlates with definiteness rather than indefiniteness.
Inanimate subjects either need to be marked because they are unexpected, or avoided
entirely. She takes subjects to have two properties: they are Instigators of the event
and they are the ultimate Affector of the O.
In Figure (3.10), I summarize the various positions we have seen with regards to
the features of a prototypical subject and a prototypical object.
Prototypical Subject Prototypical Object
Hopper and volitional, potent affected, individuated:
Thompson (1980) (proper, human, animate,
concrete, singular, count,
referential, definite)
Dowty (1991) volitional, sentient, affecting, changing, affected, stationary,
moving, independent dependent
Dixon (1994) animate, definite inanimate, indefinite
Aissen (2003) animate, definite inanimate, indefinite
Næss (2004) controlling affected
Fauconnier (2011) affecting, instigating affected

Figure 3.10: Summary of the Prototypical Subject and Object

There are various ideas about the meaning of the marker itself: Jakobson argues
that the accusative marks directionality of action from the verb. Hopper and
Thompson take both ergative and accusative marking to mark high transitivity.
The Nominal hierarchy implies that ergative and accusative marking discriminate
atypical subjects and objects.

Criticisms of Markedness

Hopper and Thompson (1980) and Dixon (1994) are both markedness-based accounts
that make use of a prototype. However, in a sense they make opposite predictions
about what markedness marks: for Hopper and Thompson a morphological form will
mark a more prototypical event, while for Dixon a morphological form will mark a

118
less prototypical event. On the one hand, there is the meaning of the mark itself. On
the other, there is the observation that marking is more common on deviations from
the prototype. Næss (2004) is an analysis of markedness in DSM and DOM systems.
She argues that animate objects are unmarked on the level of the object prototype
(because they tend to be affected), but they are marked as members of an accusative
case-marking system (for which the unmarked form in a subject-object pair is the
subject).

The problem is that a theorist can pick and choose a particular element of the
system to argue for or against any hypothesis. We can argue, for example, that
ergativity should be more likely with inanimate subjects because the typical sub-
ject is animate and the ergative marks deviation from the norm. Or we can argue
that ergativity should be more likely with animate subjects, because in an ergative
case-marking system the marked member of the subject-object pair is the highly an-
imate, controlling subject. Shannon (1986) summarizes the issue: “Given seemingly
arbitrary M[arkedness]-values, M-assimilation, reversal, and complementarity, there
seems little that one cannot ‘explain.”’

A second critique of markedness comes from Haspelmath (2006), who argues

against the usefulness of markedness as a concept on the grounds that it has been given
a number of distinct meanings in the literature (he counts twelve distinct senses). He
claims that none of these senses are best understood under the cover term of marked-
ness. In particular, he argues that semantic markedness should be understood in
terms of the semantic notions of hyponymy and polysemy, along with conversational
implicatures and conventionalization. This must be separated from the notion of nat-
uralness based on textual frequency, which is a separate but important mechanism
in the grammar.

Furthermore, he notes that there are varying levels of markedness pairs. To take
the example of gendered pairs from above, ‘fox’/‘vixen’ and ‘prince’/‘princess’ are not

119
equivalent: a vixen is a type of fox, but a princess is not a type of prince. Haspelmath
describes a gradient cline of oppositional pairs.

I discuss these issues in depth in chapter 6.2. To preface that discussion, I believe
that the way to counter Shannon’s critique is to first consider the semantic meaning
entailed by the mark itself, and then to consider what pragmatic motivations exist
for using the mark. I would therefore like to discard the notion of markedness as
inherently representing deviation from a prototype.

As for Haspelmath’s critique, I argue for a narrow notion of semantic markedness

that correlates with the third sense he describes: formal markedness as opposition
between a marked form and a zero form. It is this narrow sense of markedness which
drives the opposition of two forms along a path of grammaticalization from conver-
sational implicature to semantic entailment, as detailed by Lehmann (1989). Haspel-
math’s gradient cline of oppositional pairs is in fact evidence for this particular notion
markedness, which I describe in detail in 6.2.3. It is this form of semantic markedness
which drives variable ergativity in Nepali, as it does with any optional case marking
system. This is intimately connected with the notion of discourse prominence, which
I turn to now.

3.2.6 Discourse Prominence

It is significant that the ergative is frequently described as imparting “emphasis”

where it alternates with the nominative (cf. Grierson 1904a, Clark 1963, Masica
1993). This is a strong indication that the usage of the ergative has implications for
information structure, the way that sentences are organized to provide information
in the context of a discourse (Krifka 2008, Féry and Ishihara 2016).

Clark (1963: 279) produces the following dialogue in his reader:

(57) a. bāhira ke-ko khalbal?

outside what-gen noise

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 ‘What’s the noise about outside?’

b. karmi-haru-le chānā hāli-rahe-chan

worker-pl-erg roof lay-cont-perf2.3.pl
‘The workmen are laying the roof.’

In discussing the usage of the ergative over the nominative in this case, Clark writes
that when “special emphasis is to be placed on the subject, the Instrumental [that
is, Ergative] Case is used, as here. The implication is: it is the carpenters, they are
laying the roof ”(Clark 1963: 279).
Similarly, Hutt and Subedi (1999: 116-118) observe that the ergative may be used
“to emphasise the subject of a transitive verb... if the sentence is a question asking
who or what is the subject of a transitive verb,” or “if the sentence is a response to
a question [...], or focuses in any way upon the subject of the verb.”

(58) a. kas-le tyo kurā bhan-cha ?

who.obl-erg that thing say-pres.3.sg ?
‘Who says that?’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 117)

b. āmā-le bhan-nu.huncha ni
mother-erg say-pres.3.sg.hon prt
‘Mother says so, you know!’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 117)

(59) a. āja kas-le ciyā ban-āũ-cha ?

today who.obl-erg tea make-caus-pres.3.sg ?
‘Who will make the tea today?’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 117)

b. āja bhāi-le ciyā ban-āũ-cha

today younger.brother-erg tea make-caus-pres.3.sg
‘Today younger brother will make the tea.’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 117)

Tournadre (1991) reports a somewhat similar use of the ergative in Tibetan. However,
here the ergative marking clearly indicates a contrast:

(60) a. kha.nub dgong.dag slob.khang-la su-s

day.before.yesterday evening classroom-obl who-erg
bsdad-pa.red
stay-aor.gnom

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 ‘In the evening of the day before yesterday, who stayed in the classroom?’

b. nga-s ma bsdad
I-erg neg stay.aor.ego
‘I didn’t stay.’

c. bkra.shi gcig.po-s bsdad-pa.red

Tashi alone-erg stay-aor.gnom
‘Only Tashi stayed.’

Tournadre (1991: 105) concludes that the ergative “has a rhetorical function
whose aim is to underline or ‘highlight’ the agent” [emphasis in the original]. In fact,
we find pragmatic effects like contrastive focus and topic correlating with the usage
of the ergative in many of the Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the Himalayas
(DeLancey 2011, Zeisler 2012, Chelliah et al. 2011).

These are explanations based on the idea of Discourse Prominence. Clark and
Tournadre are abscribing a pragmatic role to the ergative case in the interpretation of
the clause. The ergative imparts some level of prominence to the marked St , speakers
use this mechanism to highlight certain aspects of the discourse, and hearers notice
this imposed prominence and interpret it.

Prominence is a common thread through functional-theoretic explanations of op-

tional ergativity. McGregor 2009, McGregor 2010) surveys optional and differential
ergative systems around the world. He argues for a semiotic [prominent] feature,
which is correlated with the ergative in languages with optional ergative marking,
while the nominative correlates with a [backgrounded] feature (I will discuss this
in more detail below).

Furthermore, Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s motivation for the concept of transi-
tivity (which is operationalized as a proto-role) is discourse-based. Discourse is struc-
tured by two grounding elements: the Foreground consists of sequential events that
provide the basic structure of a narrative. The Background consists of scene-setting
statements and evaluative commentary that is extraneous to the overall structure of

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the narrative. Sentences with high transitivity are in the foreground. So a marker
of high transitivity like the ergative marker is a device for signaling foregrounded
information.

Focus, Topic, and the Question Under Discussion

At the level of a particular utterance, different pieces of information are packaged

and presented in a structured way. A prominent line of investigation into informa-
tion structure follows the insights of Mathesius (1975) and the Prague Linguistic
Circle, in which utterances are structured by a dichotomy between topic and focus
(theme/rheme, topic/comment). The topic is what the utterance is about, and the
focus is what information is being said about the topic. Another important dis-
tinction in the way that information is presented is givenness (Chafe 1976). The
focus will generally be new information, while the topic is usually given information,
although this is not always the case.
Example (57a) suggests that the function of the ergative is similar to that of an
it-cleft in English. I’ve modified his example below to make the connection between
discourse and focalization explicit. It-clefting is a syntactic device for marking focus
in the English language, as is intonational stress on the noun phrase:27

(61) Who is making that noise?

(62) a. It is [ the workers]F who are making that noise.

b. THE WORKERSF are making that noise.

c. #The workers are making THAT NOISEF .

The question in (61) is about a particular person making a noise. The responses
in (62) are answers to this question. The topic of these utterances, what they are
about, is the person or persons making the sound that is known in the discourse.
27. Jackendoff (1972) refers to stress associated with focus as the A-accent.

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The focus is on the new information which answers the question. (62a) focuses this
response with an it-cleft, and (62b) uses a focal accent.

Note that (62c) is generally not a good response to this particular question, al-
though it may be a good response to another question like “Which noise are the work-
ers making?”28 Thus the placement of focus presupposes the implicit question that
is being answered. However, conversational participants will tend to accommodate
their expectations to the utterances given. The questioner in (61) will understand
from (62c) that the answerer has responded to a different question than the one which
was asked, and will infer that this new question is relevant to the discourse. Thus
speakers use focus pragmatically to guide the discourse by proposing questions and
asserting answers to them.

This analysis follows from a question-based model of discourse structure (Roberts

1996, Büring 2003, Velleman and Beaver 2016), under which discourse is guided and
shaped by the Question Under Discussion (QUD). Every assertion is conceptual-
ized as the answer to an explicit or implicit question given in the discourse. Assertions
add new information into the Common Ground, the background information that
is mutually known to be shared between the participants (Stalnaker 1974). Discourse
is guided by hierarchically-embedded questions which represent topics of discourse.

Another line of formalization comes from the theory of alternative semantics of

focus from Rooth (1985), under which focus indicates that there are alternatives
relevant in the current discourse. The question-based model, in which focus is a
pragmatic phenomenon rather than a semantic one, is more relevant to our purposes
because it makes explicit the intuition that the utterance form with the ergative is
the response to a particular type of question. It also brings together two separate
lines of thinking about the notion of topic, in which topic is conceived of as either the

28. It is only a good response with a contrastive topic, as in “The workers are making THAT
NOISE, and the boss is making THAT OTHER NOISE.”

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entity that the statement is about or the question that the statement is answering
(McNally 1998). The topic of any sentence which is about a particular referent X can
be thought of either as the referent itself or as the answer to a question “What about
X?” Thus we might expect ergative marking to correlate with either topic or focus.

Abadie (1974) and Bickel (2011) take Example (57a) from Clark to be evidence
that the ergative marks focus. However, Abadie (1974) notes that her informants
disagree that the element marked by -le must be focused or even particularly em-
phatic. Verbeke (2011) observes that the ergative is often used in “out of the blue”
contexts, when there is not clearly an implicit question that involves the subject.
Verbeke concludes that “emphasis/focus may be the motivation of the occurrence of
le when a new [subject] that is different from the previous subject is introduced; in
other instances, emphasis/focus is clearly not the decisive factor”(Verbeke 2011: 161).

Furthermore Tournadre’s Tibetan example (60 above) may be a contrastive

topic. Topics are typically not prominent in an utterance because they depict given
information, that is, information which is part of the common ground. In many lan-
guages including Nepali, topics may be omitted (in either subject or object position).
However, contrastive topics emphasize a contrast:

(63) Who stayed in the classroom last night?

(64) a. ICT stayed in town last night. (TASHIF stayed in the classroom.)

b. [ AS FOR ME ]CT , I stayed in town last night. (TASHIF stayed in the

classroom.)

c. # IF stayed in town last night. (TASHIF stayed in the classroom.)

Contrastive topic may be marked in English by what Jackendoff (1972) calls the
English B-contour. Note that the rise-fall pattern of the contrastive contour in (64a)
is different from the pitch accent designated by F. The first sentence in (64c) with
an A-accent is not a felicitous answer to the question because it addresses a different

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question (“Who stayed in town last night?”). The B-contour imparts prominence to
a topic, and in doing so it presupposes the answer to a question that is different from
the one that was asked. Under the formulation of Büring (2003), this question would
be “Who stayed where last night?” The usage of the contrastive contour presupposes
a question with two wh-words rather than one, and it is a strategy for changing the
topic under discussion (the QUD).

While it has a slightly different usage, the “As for” construction also has the
effect of imparting prominence to a topic in a way that emphasizes contrast. Many
languages have markers that associate with topicalized information of some sort, but
it is difficult to categorize a unified topic marker category in the world’s languages
(Büring 2003). Büring notes that topic markers differ in terms of whether they
are obligatory or optional, whether they can serve other functions, and what sorts
of referents can be marked. In many languages (as with English “as for”), they
must introduce an existing discourse referent as the new topic. In other words, the
topicalized entity has to be definite, or at least highly salient in the discourse.29
However, this is not true for topic markers in Tzozil, which can introduce a new
discourse referent as the topic.

Another point of variation is whether a topic marker is available on questions.

Note the examples in (58) and (59). The ergative is found on both the question and
the response. In my elicitations, multiple consultants remarked that if the question
has an ergative marker, then the answer has to have an ergative marker. We also find
this with Tournadre’s Tibetan example. This is an odd behavior if we think of the
ergative as having a constrastive effect similar to the “as for” construction, because
once a new topic is introduced there’s no reason to immediately reintroduce it.

In sum, we would like to know whether the usage of the ergative correlates with

29. It would sound odd to begin a conversation with the statement “As for dolphins, I hate them.”
The referents of local pronouns (I and you), on the other hand, are always salient discourse referents.

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highly focalized elements or contrastive topics. If it is associated with focus, we expect
that the referent of the ergative-marked element

(1) will usually (but not always) be new to the discourse;

(2) may be definite or indefinite;

(3) provides new information about the topic of discussion;

Whereas if it is associated with contrastive topic we might expect that the referent
of the ergative-marked element

(1) is given in the discourse;

(2) is not the current topic;

(3) is definite;

(4) is the topic of discussion, i.e., is a referent X such that the sentence can be
considered a relevant partial response to the over-arching question “What about
X?”

Intonation, Word Order, and Discourse Particles

In English, intonation and pitch convey information about focus and topic. In Nepali,
focused elements are not straightforwardly associated with distinctive prosodic con-
tours or accents. In Ladd (1996)’s typology of intonation patterns, Hindi and Bangla
are described as lacking lexical stress and lexical accent. Generalizations about these
languages are applicable to Nepali as well.30
By contrast, word order in Nepali is highly correlated with information structure.
While the default word order for Nepali clauses is SOV, all configurations are possible
30. On the other hand, there is some recent experimental evidence that focus does in fact have
an effect on prosodic realization in Hindi (Patil et al. 2008, Féry et al. 2016). But outside of
a laboratory environment it is not practical to investigate these subtle effects as they relate to
information structure in Nepali.

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and have effects on how information is presented. Butt and King (1996) analyze these
configurations as the syntactic encoding of discourse functions. Their languages of
study are Urdu and Turkish, but their generalizations are applicable to the Nepali
language, which behaves quite similarly to Urdu in this respect. Butt and King
distinguish new and given information, but they also make a separate distinction
based on prominence:

(1) Topic: [-new][+prominent]

(2) Focus: [+new][+ prominent]

(3) Background: [-new][-prominent]

(4) Completive: [+new][-prominent]

The first element of a clause is the topic. The subject is clause-initial by default,
but when another element is preposed in the utterance this element is topicalized.
Here examples from the NNSP sample (discussed in the Methodologies chapter in the
Corpus section):

(65) tapāĩ-lāi yo kalar dherai māc gar-cha

you.hon-acc this color very match do-pres.3.sg
‘YOUT OP this color matches quite well.’ [V001001004; M9]

The placement for focus is immediately before the verb (the default position of O).
If there is more than one focused element, the other focalized elements may remain
in-situ, but there is a contrastive interpretation.

(66) khānā.sānā sabai bebasthā hāmi gar-ch au

food.red everything manage we do-pres.3.sg
‘Food and everything WEF will take care of.’ [V001001004; M7]

Backgrounded information, like topic, contains new information. But “while topics
are the pointer to the relevant information... to be accessed by the hearer, back-

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grounded material only provides more detailed information as to how the new infor-
mation fits in with the already known information” (Butt and King 1996: 4). So it
is new information that is [-prominent], and its placement is after the verb.

(67) kurā gar-chu ma

conversation do-pres.1.sg I
‘Conversing, [I (am)]BG .’ [V001001001; M3]

Finally, completive information is also non-prominent background information, ex-

cept that it tends to be referential, that is, discourse old. Completive information
may also come before the verb, but the material immediately before the verb is more
prominent and focalized. I was unable to find a good example of this type in the
corpus.Thus the general structure of Nepali clauses is this:

(68) [Topic] [Completive] [Focus] V [Backgrounded]

In a default SOV configuration the S is interpreted as a topic, and the O as

focus. Another way that Nepali organizes the information structure of elements in a
clause is with discourse particles (what Acharya (1991) refers to as “phrasal nuance
particles” (Acharya 1991: 143)). In particular, the cāhĩ particle seems to be a marker
of contrastive topic. It typically delineates an NP or phrase in the utterance which
is preposed, and it clearly correlates with an introduced topic. I have been unable to
find detailed descriptions of the particle in the literature, but these examples from
the Nepali National Spoken Corpus are illustrative:

(69) kalar cāhĩ yastai ṭhik cha

color top like.this.emph fine cop.3.sg
‘As to the color, it is fine like this.’

(70) hātti ~-le

cāhĩ uhā “paṭh-ā-idin-chu”
elephant top pro.3.sg.hon-erg “send-caus-ben-pres.1.sg”

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 bhan-nu.bha-eko.cha
say-pres.perf1.3.sg.hon
‘As to the elephants, he has told us, “I will send (them).”

(71) ma cāhĩ ukālo cāhĩ hin-na sak-chu orālo

I top uphill top walk-nonfin able-pres.1.sg downhill
sak-dina
able-pres.1.sg.neg
‘As for me, as for (hiking) uphill, I can do it. Downhill I can’t.’

If correlated with focus, we should expect the referent of a le-marked element:

(1) to be more likely to appear preverbally but not in clause initial position;

(2) to appear concurrently with or in the same position as ta or po.

Whereas if correlated with contrastive topic, we expect the referent of a le-marked

element:

(1) to be more likely to appear in clause initial position;

(2) to appear concurrently with or in the same position as cāhĩ.

Categorical Propositions

There is another line of thinking about information structure that is relevant to the-
ories of discourse prominence. This is the theory of Thetic and Categorical Propo-
sitions which was originally developed by Marty (1918) as an expansion of Brentano
(1874). Kuroda (1972, 1990) apply this theory to linguistic expressions in an analysis
of Japanese case markers.
Marty’s theory is that there are two general types of propositions, or judgments:
the categorical proposition and the thetic proposition. Only categorical judg-
ments have a logical subject-predicate structure:

[T]he categorical judgment is assumed to consist of two separate acts, one,

the act of recognition of that which is to be made the subject, and the

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 other, the act of affirming or denying what is expressed by the predicate
about the subject. With this analysis in mind, the thetic and the cate-
gorical judgments are also called the simple and the double judgments.
(Kuroda 1972: 154)

Thetic judgments, on the other hand, impart no particular prominence to one element
over others. The subject-predicate grammatical structure does not necessarily corre-
spond to a subject-predicate logical judgment. In an impersonal thetic constructions
of English like “It is raining,” the syntactic subject position is taken by a dummy
pronoun. The sentence as a whole describes a state of affairs, a judgment about the
way that the world is (as opposed to a judgment about the way a particular entity
is). It is, in the terms of Ladusaw (2000), an existential assertion about a description.
So a thetic proposition may have a fully realized subject form, but this form is not
prominent in the discourse. This means that sentences of English are often ambiguous
between thetic and categorical readings when the subject takes and indefinite article.

(72) inu ga hasitte iru

dog subj run prog
‘A DOG is running.’ / ‘There is a dog running.’ (Kuroda 1972: 160)

The Japanese subject marker that follows inu “dog” is the subject marker ga.
Kuroda argues that ga marks a thetic proposition. It is a “a direct response to the
perceptual intake of an actual situation” (Kuroda 1990: 80). Crucially, it is not
a statement about a particular entity. It is a statement about the existence of an
ongoing event. The description of this event of running requires an actor, and this
actor is designated by “a dog.” The inclusion of a subject is grammatically necessary
in English, but it is not the topic, and its reference does not have a strong persistence
outside of that particular utterance.
Kuroda contrasts this with a categorical judgment, which is a statement about a
particular dog:

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 (73) inu wa hasitte iru
dog cat run prog
‘The dog is running.’ (Kuroda 1972: 160)

Kuroda writes that the speaker’s “interest is primarily directed towards this en-
tity, and the happening of the event referred to…is precisely that he wants to relate
the occurrence of the event to this entity”(Kuroda 1972:164). In a thetic proposition,
the subject is simply a constituent of an event. But here the subject plays a more
prominent role. “It apprehends the dog as a particular entity in the perceived situ-
ation” and “it involves the cognitive act of apprehending something as a substance
and attributing to it a certain property perceived in a particular situation”(Kuroda
1990: 80).
The Japanese wa marker may be found on elements of the sentence as well. Kuroda
notes that the logical subject of the utterance (which may differ from its grammatical
subject) is the element marked by wa:

(74) neko wa inu ga oikakete iru

cat cat dog subj chase prog
‘A dog is chasing the cat.’ (Kuroda 1972: 167)

(75) niwa de wa inu ga neko o oikakete iru

garden loc cat dog subj cat acc chase prog
‘In the garden, the dog is chasing the cat.’ (Kuroda 1972: 168)

This wa marker is generally considered to be a prototypical topic marker, and the

theory of thetic and categorical propositions may be considered a theory of topicality.
Portner and Yabushita (1998) discuss Japanese as it relates to a topics-as-entities
formalization of topicality in which topics denote entities that the sentence is “about.”
The topic information is part of the common ground (and typically, but not always,
definite), and the new information may be understood as the focus. McNally (1998)
and Portner and Yabushita (1998) both contrast a topics-as-entities formalization of
topic with a question-under-discussion formalization of topic, in which sentence topics

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are modeled as questions, in that the marked element fits into the possible question
under discussion. The sentence element identified as a topic must be definite and its
existence must be presupposed in the mind of its speakers. In comparing these notions
of topicality with Kuroda’s terms, the notion of a categorical subject is associated
with topic.

In some ways Japanese wa is more clearly analogous to the Nepali discourse par-
ticle cāhĩ because it can attach to different kinds of phrases and is clearly associated
with prominence. However, there are some aspects of Kuroda’s theory of categorical
judgment that make it attractive to the study of the Nepali ergative. It provides an
explanation for the habitual and/or generic readings of simple present tense verbs in
Nepali (as discussed in the section on stage-level and individual-level predication):

(76) kukhurā-le phul pār-cha

chicken-erg egg lay-pres.3.sg
‘Chickens lays eggs.’ (Hutt and Subedi 1999: 116)

(77) cālak-le gāḍi calāu-cha

driver-erg car drive-pres.3.sg
‘The driver drives the vehicles.’ (Butt and Poudel 2007: 7)

Kuroda notes that generic sentences which define an inherent property, as in (76),
must be categorical propositions. The usage of the ergative often corresponds with a
distinction between a stage-level interpretation (“The driver is driving the vehicle”)
and an individual-level interpretation, but this is not always the case. However, my
consultants commonly expressed an intuition that the form with the ergative “picks
out” the referent from other options. On of the elicitation consultants put it this way:

“It seems that when it is a general statement you can leave out the -le
and it still makes sense. But having the -le just makes it clear as to who
is doing the action. You are making the extra statement that it is [the
subject] doing the action.” [TD]

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Ladusaw (2000), expanding upon Milsark (1974), notes the interaction between propo-
sition type (thetic, categorical), predication type (stage-level, individual-level), and
subject type (weak, strong). Strongly construed subjects are highly definite, and
weakly construed subjects are indefinite. Milsark’s generalization is that weakly con-
strued subjects are not found with individual-level predications.

Thetic Categorical
Individual-Level Predicate No Yes
Stage-Level Predicate Yes Yes
Strong Subject Yes Yes
Weak Subject Yes No

The upshot is that a categorical proposition may be based upon either an individual-
level predicate or a stage-level predicate but must have a strongly construed subject.
However, a thetic proposition can only be based upon a stage-level predicate with
either a weakly or strongly construed subject. If we hypothesize that the ergative cor-
relates with categorical propositions (that it marks the logical subject of a categorical
proposition in the transitive imperfective), then we hypothesize:

(1) The ergative should be possible with both stage-level and individual-level in-
terpretations, but to correlate with an interpretation in which the subject has
a deep connection to the predicate or the predicate defines the subject;

(2) The ergative should not be possible with weakly construed quantifiers or with
indefinite referents;

(3) The nominative should not be possible on categorical propositions. If we define

the subject of a categorical proposition as an aboutness topic, it should not be
the possible in the answer to a “What about X?” question.

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Prominence and Markedness

McGregor (2009, 2010) surveys optional and differential ergative case marking sys-
tems and provides an account of ergative marking from a usage-semiotic perspective.
McGregor’s two features are [prominent] and [backgrounded]. There is a clus-
ter of features associated with prominence and a cluster of features associated with
backgrounding, and in different languages these grammaticalize in different ways such
that different features are primarily associated with usage. Figure (3.11) summarizes
these features. The features associated with prominence are similar to those expected
in a markedness-based account in which prototypical subjects are high in agency.

[Prominent] [Backgrounded]
Contrastive Focus Topic
Unexpected Predictable
High in Agency/Potency Low in Agency/Potency

Figure 3.11: Summary of Features from McGregor (2010)

Furthermore, McGregor emphasizes that the use or non-use of a marker can itself be
a grammatical sign, separate from the marker itself. This observation comes from
languages like Gooniyandi, for which McGregor argues that the usage of the ergative
marking does not signal anything, but non-use signals low agentivity. While ergative
marking is always associated with prominence rather than backgrounding, there are
four different ways that a language may operationalize this distinction:

(1) Usage of the Ergative signifies nothing: [-prominent]

Non-Usage of the Ergative signifies nothing: [-backgrounded]

(2) Usage of the Ergative signifies prominence: [+prominent]

Non-Usage of the Ergative signifies nothing: [-backgrounded]

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 (3) Usage of the Ergative signifies nothing: [-prominent]
Non-Usage of the Ergative signifies backgrounding: [+backgrounded]

(4) Usage of the Ergative signifies prominence: [+prominent]

Non-Usage of the Ergative signifies backgrounding: [+backgrounded]

In the first case there is a split that is determined entirely by semantic or syntactic
factors (there is no optional ergative marking). In the second, the ergative signifies
prominence but its non-usage signifies nothing. An example of this would be the Hindi
intransitives in which the usage of the ergative signifies that the subject underwent
the action purposely (thus, is high in agency). The third example is the Gooniyandi
case, in which the ergative signifies nothing but the non-usage of the ergative signifies
backgrounding. And McGregor predicts a fourth case in which both usage and non-
usage are informative.
This is compatible with Hopper and Thompson (1980), in which the ergative form
may signal high transitivity while the nominative form may signal low transitivity. It
is less clearly compatible with Aissen’s formulation, in which the absence of a marker
does not have meaning in itself. An account based on markedness asymmetry could be
generally translated to this theory. It would require that the zero-form be considered
the marked form in some languages for which the ergative signifies nothing and its
non-usage signifies low-agentivity. Additionally, a markedness account would predict
that it is not possible for there to be a language in which both usage and non-usage
of the ergative are informative.
I believe that discourse prominence is an inherent feature of any optional case
marking system, not just OEM systems. For example, Aissen (2003) notes that
in DOM systems were marking is optional, the usage of the accusative marker will
correlate with topicality. Whenever there is an opposition between a form and its

136
absence, the usage of the form will correlate with the marked entity being given a
greater prominence in the discourse. The marked element will be more likely to be
apprehended as the logical subject of a categorical proposition, and it will tend to
correlate with definiteness and topicality.

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Chapter 4

Observations

इन्दर्का अगाडी स्वगर् को बयान ।

नेपाली उखान-टु क्का

Describing heaven to Indra, Ruler

of the Sky

Nepali proverb

In the last chapter I discussed the various explanations of the Nepali pattern
of ergative marking where its distribution alternates with the nominative. I also
discussed the broader literature on optional ergativity and how it touches on the
theoretical issues of markedness, transitivity, and discourse prominence. There is
substantial overlap in these concepts, and taken together they make a number of
predictions about the distribution of the ergative. These predictions can be con-
ceptualized as a set of potential associations between ergative marking and various
morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features.
The goal of this chapter is to thoroughly investigate these feature associations
using the tools described in the Methodology section: directed elicitations, grammat-
icality judgment survey results, and the analysis NNSP sample. For the conclusions

138
that have already been drawn about Nepali in the literature, this investigation will
provide further evidence for these associations. From the broader literature on op-
tional ergativity and transitivity there are a number of additional potential associa-
tions that are relevant to Nepali, and I will examine each of these in turn.

The feature associations broadly fall into four categories: those that involve the
interpretation of the Event, those that involve the interpretation of the Subject
(both St and Si ), those that involve the interpretation of the Object (O), and those
associations that correlate with features of the Discourse.

I find multiple associations between ergative marking and semantic/pragmatic

features, almost all of which follow the predictions of Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s
Transitivity Hypothesis. However, with few exceptions these associations are not cat-
egorical but rather represent general tendencies. They are features of pragmatically-
conditioned case marking and all of them ultimately derive from two sources:

(1) The meaning of -le as the marker of an effector role

(2) The prominence accorded to a case-marked subject in an optional case marking

system

I find the following generalizations to be categorical:

(1) Ergative marking is required in perfective transitive main clauses and varies
with the nominative in all other transitive clauses.

(2) Ergative marking is excluded from all copular clauses and intransitive clauses
(although some intransitive clauses can exhibit ergativity if they are specifically
construed as transitive, and some transitive clauses may lack it if they are
construed as intransitive).

These are not pragmatically conditioned associations, but rather represent a gram-
maticalized correlation between ergative marking and specific properties of the clause.

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4.1 Ergative marking and the interpretation of the

Event

Ergative marking is required in the domain of perfective transitive main clauses,

varies with the nominative in other transitive clauses, and is disallowed elsewhere.
It correlates somewhat with individual-level predication, but more closely with the
notion of characterizing predicates. Differing judgments on whether the ergative is
associated with habitual readings are due to two conflicting interpretations of the
ergative: as an effector of an event with an individuated object, or as a marker of a
categorical proposition with a characterizing interpretation of the event.

4.1.1 Ergativity and the Nepali Verb Form

Before investigating whether there is an association between ergative case-marking

and the interpretation of event structure, it is important to precisely delineate where
ergativity is obligatory, where it is variable, and where it is disallowed. Here I present
the results of elicitation, survey, and corpus data as it relates to the presence or
absence of -le in each of the various verb forms of the Nepali language. I restrict
my investigation to transitive clauses because the distribution of -le in intransitive
clauses is a separate issue which I will discuss in the following subsection.

The overall results of the Kathmandu survey and NNSP analysis are presented in
Figure (4.1). In the survey results, the average judgment for sentences in these verb
forms (rated on a scale from 1-5) is presented for nominative and ergative forms of the
same sentences. In the survey results I present the overall percentage of ergative (vs.
nominative) marking on the St . In the following subsections I will discuss each of these
results individually. The main takeaway from these figures is that ergative marking
is heavily dispreferred/disallowed in the perfective verb forms and variable elsewhere.
In some cases (such as with the hypothetical future and definite future verb forms)

140
 Figure 4.1: Ergative Marking Results by Verb Form

there is a marked preference for the ergative over the nominative, but in all of these
imperfective verb forms there is variation between ergative and nominative-marked
transitive subjects.

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The Perfective Domain

We expect ergative case marking to be obligatory for transitive clauses with perfective
verbal morphology. The perfective domain consists of verb forms which contain -e-
or -yo: perf, pres.perf, pst.perf, pres.mir:1

(78) a. rām-le ãap khaa-yo

ram-erg mango eat-perf.3.sg
‘Ram ate the mango.’ [PK]

b. maile doctor-lāi bheṭ-eko chu

I.erg doctor-acc meet-pres.perf.1.sg
‘I have met the doctor.’ [PK]

c. tei ta maile khoj-eko thiẽ

there prt I.erg search-pst.perf.1.sg
‘I had looked for you there.’ [V001002005; M24]

d. us-le kām gar-echa

pro.obl-erg work do-pres.mir.3.sg
‘Apparently, he has done the work.’ [BB]

Every one of the elicitation consultants was unwavering in the judgment that the
nominative form is ungrammatical in sentences with these verb forms. Considering
that the expression of ergativity is sensitive to discourse context in many other gram-
matical domains, we might expect a nominative subject to be construable in the right
situation, but this does not appear to be the case. When respondents are asked about
whether they can construct a context in which they or someone else might be able to
use sentences like the above with a bare subject, the only possibility that comes to
mind is that the sentence comes from a nonnative speaker of Nepali.
The Kathmandu Survey did not have a section dedicated to testing perfective verb
forms because the focus of the survey was variability in the imperfective domain.
1. As to the past mirative -e-thyo, there were no examples in the corpus and multiple respondents
expressed the belief that it was simply a shortened form of the past perfect. While it may be a
separate case for some speakers (cf. Michailovsky 1996, Peterson 2000), I’m not including it here
due to lack of evidence.

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However, there was a single question (B4) for which the response clauses were in
a perfective tense. From the results in Figure (4.2) it is clear that the ergative
form is heavily preferred and the nominative form is heavily dispreferred, although
the percentage of favorable responses (meaning, 4 or 5) for the nominative form
was somewhat high (7.1%) considering the categorical judgments of all nine of my
elicitation consultants.

Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

ERG (n=28) 4.86 96.4% 0.0%
NOM (n=28) 1.50 7.1% 85.7%

Figure 4.2: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Perfective Transitive Clauses

In the NNSP sample analysis I coded 558 clauses as perfective, of which 195 were
non-modal transitive main clauses. The St argument was elided for 53% of these
clauses, and of the remaining 91 clauses, the St was in the ergative case 90.1%
of the time. While this result also follows the expected pattern in that the ergative is
heavily preferred, the nominative bare form was found nearly 10% of the time, which
is a relatively high percentage given the categorical judgments of every elicitation
consultant.

One explanation for this unusual percentage is dialectal variation in the language
of the survey respondents and corpus speakers. SB in particular gave his impression
that this usage of the nominative in transitive perfectives is a feature of Nepali spoken
in the Terai (southern plains) south of Kathmandu, particularly by native speakers
of the Tharu language.

Among the survey respondents, the only Tharu speaker was also the only respon-
dent to rate the nominative form of the transitive perfective sentence a ‘5,’ which is
suggestive but anecdotal. In the NNSP, individual speakers ranged from 0-33% usage
of the nominative form in the perfective. The speakers who were recorded in the Terai
(interview V001002005; speakers M00024, M00025, M00026, and M00027) used the

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nominative similarly if not somewhat less frequently (8-13%) than those interviews
with speakers from elsewhere (0-33%). With the corpus, it may be the case that the
ergative form is more likely to be omitted in rapid speech, or reduced to the level of
not being audible to the transcribers.
Exceptions aside, we should consider these perfective forms to represent a fairly
categorical split in ergative marking. The nominative form is dispreferred for each of
these verb forms in the transitive perfective domain.

The Present Imperfective Domain

In contrast with the perfective domain, there is a very clear alternation between
nominative and ergative case on the St for those imperfective tenses which are built
upon the simple present. We find both nominative and ergative forms in the corpus:

(79) a. kasari - ma udāharaṇ din-chu

how - I.nom example give-pres.1.sg
‘How - I’ll give you an example ...’ [V001002003; M13]

b. ani pheri ‘lagāu’ bhan-chau timi-le

and again ‘wear.imp’ say-pres.2.sg you-erg
‘And then once again ‘wear it!’ you’ll say.’ [V001001004; M7]

And elicitation respondents generally find both forms to be possible:

(80) a. sabai birālo-haru/birālo-haru-le māsu khān-chan

all cat-pl-erg/cat-pl-erg meat eat-pres.3.pl
‘All cats eat meat.’ [ST]

b. prakāsh/prakāsh-le cigarette piun-cha (tyasari

prakash.nom/prakash-erg cigarette drink-pres.3.sg (therefore
khok-irah-eko cha)
cough-prog.pres.3.sg)
‘Prakash smokes cigarettes (and that’s why he has been coughing).’ [PK]2
2. The verbs typically used for the inhalation of tobacco are khānu ‘to eat/consume’ and piunu
‘to drink.’ Schmidt (1993) notes in the dictionary entries for these terms that khānu is the general
term for eating, smoking and drinking; piunu is more commonly associated with the consumption
of liquor.

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A few of these examples come from elicitations in which I was specifically interested in
whether an alternation was possible, and for these I have written the two possibilities.
For the moment I will leave aside the question of whether the ergative correlates with
individual-level predication or a habitual or generic reading (this will be discussed
later in this section) but just point out that both the nominative and the ergative
may be found in clauses with the pres form.

This alternation exists with the present continuous (cont) and archaic present
(arch.pres) forms as well. These forms are the same except that there is an aspec-
tual morpheme which attaches to the stem (-dai and dā respectively):3

(81) a. john/john-le kitāb-ko antim pāna lekh-dai-cha

john.nom/john-erg book-gen last page write-cont-pres.3.sg
‘John is writing the last page of (his) book.’ [PK]

b. prāya.jasto bacā-haru bakunda khel-dai-chan

most child-pl football play-cont-pres.3.pl
‘Most of the children are playing football.’ [RM]

c. u/usle kām gar-dā-cha

pro.nom/pro.erg work do-arch.pres.3.sg
‘(S)he does work.’ [SB]

d. pāle-le dhyān di-era her-dā-cha

guard-erg attention give-conj watch-arch.pres.3.sg
‘The guard watches (the bank) attentively.’ [BA]

All elicitation consultants found both the ergative and the nominative to be grammat-
ical in transitive clauses with the present imperfective verb form. This is evident from
the Kathmandu survey, in which the majority of the questions were in the present
or present continuous verb forms. These results are summarized in Figure (4.3) and
Figure (4.4).

3. The archaic present form is not found in the corpus and elicitation consultants consider it to
be a mark of written language or formal speech.

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 Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)
ERG (n=662) 4.48 87.6% 8.0%
NOM (n=660) 3.39 55.5% 28.5%

Figure 4.3: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Simple Present Transitive Clauses

Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

ERG (n=413) 4.30 82.8% 9.9%
NOM (n=413) 3.92 67.5% 15.5%

Figure 4.4: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Present Continuous Transitive Clauses

Note that the average score is high and a majority of the respondents like both the
ergative and the nominative form, which suggests that both are acceptable responses
in many cases. In the simple present there is a notable preference for the ergative
form, although the majority of speakers find the nominative form to be acceptable as
well.4
In the NNSP sample I coded 691 verbs in the present imperfective tenses, of which
116 were non-modal transitive main clause verbs. The St was elided for 53% of these
verbs. Of the remaining 55 clauses, all of them were in the simple present tense, and
the ergative was found on the St 58% of the time. Both the ergative and
nominative are frequently found in these verb forms built upon the simple present.

The Past Habitual Imperfective

For the past imperfective (habitual) verb form, the extent to which the nominative
varies with the ergative is unclear. I asked PK, TD, BB, and SB about the usage of
this form, and while PK absolutely disliked the ergative form in the first person, they
all accepted both nominative and ergative forms depending on the context.

(82) a. ma cricket khel-the

I cricket play-pst.hab.1.sg
4. The main purpose of the survey was to test the usage of the ergative in certain contexts, such
as with generic or habitual readings, which may have contributed to the preference for the ergative
here.

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 ‘I used to play cricket.’ [PK]

b. cor/cor-le scarf cor-āu-thyo

thief.nom/thief-erg scarf steal-cause-pst.hab.3.sg
‘Thieves would steal the scarf.’ [TD]

c. u/usle rukh rop-ne kām gar-thyo

pro.nom/pro.erg tree grow-nonfin work do-pst.hab.3.sg
‘S(he) used to do work planting trees.’ [SB]

d. euṭā.euṭā lālṭin bāl-thyo

single.single lantern light-pst.hab.3.sg
‘(They) used to light one lantern at a time.’ [V001002005; M26]

Unfortunately, there is no data from the survey or corpus analysis to back up these
judgments. I did not include this verb form in the Kathmandu Survey, and it is
relatively rare in the NNSP: I coded 50 utterances as past habitual (including the
thyo form of the copula), of which only 5 were non-modal transitive main clauses,
and the subject was elided in every single case (one of these examples is 82d above).

The rarity of the past habitual in transitive clauses is itself noteworthy. Of the
fifty examples of this verb form, only 6 were transitive, while 22 were intransitive and
22 were copular. This may be a result of the likelihood for a past habitual to encode
backgrounded, scene-setting information.

From the judgments of elicitation consultants I tentatively conclude that there

is an ergative/nominative alternation with this verb form as well, although more
research on this topic would be helpful.

The Definite Future

The definite future is a periphrastic verb form which consists of the -ne nonfinite
marker and a present tense copula (typically this form is cited with the cha copula,
but as we see from (83d) it is also possible with ho, as are all periphrastic verb forms).
The Definite Future is counted as an imperfective verb form as it does not contain

147
the -e- perfective marker, but multiple elicitation respondents (PK, ST, and TD)
expressed the intuition that the ergative is required in all transitive clauses marked
with this form that were discussed, while others (BB, SB) found it to be optional.
Abadie (1974) describes the ergative as optional here, but my general impression is
that it is heavily preferred. In Verbeke and de Cuypere’s corpus analysis, they found
the ergative marker on 74% of the subjects in definite future clauses (Verbeke and
De Cuypere 2015: 11).

(83) a. bholi socrates-le bikh khā-ne cha

tomorrow socrates-erg poison eat-def.fut.3.sg
‘Socrates will drink poison tomorrow.’ [TD]

b. maile doctor-lāi bhet-ne chu

I.erg doctor-acc meet-def.fut.1.sg
‘I will meet the doctor.’ [PK]

c. khamda-haru-le hotel ban-aau-ne chan

worker-pl-erg hotel make-caus-def.fut.3.pl
‘The workers will build the hotel.’ [PK]

d. ma talab wahā~-bāṭa khā-ne ho

I.nom salary there-abl eat-def.fut.1.sg
‘I will get my salary (regularly) from there.’ [V001002005; M7]

The Kathmandu Survey contained a single question trial on the definite future verb
form (E4), but the responses are instructive (Figure 4.5). The average score for
both the ergative nominative form are quite high, but the ergative form is heavily
preferred. Similarly, all but one respondent rated the ergative form 4 or 5, compared
to the three quarters who rated the nominative form 4 or 5. This tells us that both
forms are acceptable to most speakers, but the ergative form is heavily preferred.

Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

ERG (n=27) 4.56 92.6% 3.7%
NOM (n=27) 3.96 74.1% 11.1%

Figure 4.5: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Definite Future Transitive Clauses

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 In the NNSP sample there were 115 examples of the definite future, of which
only 15 were in transitive non-modal clauses, and the subject was elided in all but
one example (the nominative form in 83d above). This single result does not tell us
very much, but the grammaticality judgments from elicitation consultants and survey
respondents confirm the findings of Abadie (1974) and Verbeke and De Cuypere
(2015) that the ergative is more common on the St for this verb form, although the
nominative form is also possible.

The Hypothetical Future, Optative, and Imperative Mood

On transitive subjects with the hypothetical future and optative inflectional verb
forms, as well as in the imperative mood, ergative marking is variable.

(84) a. rām/rām-le film her-lā

ram/ram-erg film see-hyp.fut.3.sg
‘Ram may see a film.’ [TD]

b. ke gar-āũ ta hāmi ?
what do-hyp.fut.1.pl f we ?
‘What should we do?’ [V001001001; M3]

c. yo yug-ko bholi jun itihā ~s lekhni-le ke

this era-gen tomorrow which history writer-erg what
bhan-lān ?
say-hyp.fut.3.pl ?
‘What will (future) writers of the history of this era say?’ [V001002003;
M13]

d. u/us-le tyo sarpa mār-os

pro.nom/pro-erg this snake kill-opt.3.sg
‘I wish he would kill that snake.’ [SB; example from Poudel (2008)]

e. je hos, suiṭar cāhĩ sāno sāij-mā dekh-āu-nus

whatever cop.opt, sweater top small size-loc see-caus-imper.hon
na
prt
‘Whatever, show me a sweater in a smaller size.’ [V001001001; M1]

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 f. aba khānā timi-haru-le haami-lāi gar
now food you-pl-erg we-dat do.imper
‘Now, you make food for us.’ [V001002005; M24]

The elicitation consultants found both the nominative and ergative to be possible
in the optative and hypothetical future. In the Kathmandu survey, there were no
question trials with the imperative or optative but there were three question trials
with the hypothetical future. The data in Figure (4.6) indicate a pattern similar but
more pronounced that that of the definite future: the ergative is almost universally
acceptable, while the nominative is dispreferred in about half of the judgments.5

Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

ERG (n=54) 4.83 96.3% 1.9%
NOM (n=53) 2.53 24.5% 52.8%

Figure 4.6: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Hypothetical Future Transitive Clauses

In the NNSP sample, I encoded 82 clauses as hypothetical future of which 63 were

in non-modal transitive main clauses, but the subject was elided 94% of the time. Of
the remaining four sentences in the hypothetical future, the ergative was used
once. The hypothetical future is most commonly used in the first person plural in a
hortative sense or as a polite way to ask for something (gar-āũlā! ‘Let’s do it!’). Of
the 82 total hypothetical future clauses, 66 (80%) were with the first person plural
subject. The difference in results between the corpus and the survey results is likely
attributable to this bias towards the first person plural form in usage: the nominative
is more common with first person forms and the ergative is more common with the
third person forms that were tested in the survey. This relates to the correlation
between the usage of the ergative and the Nominal Hierarchy, which I will discuss
later in this chapter.
5. Here I tabulated the results from the two transitive examples F2 and G5. F2 was included in
the intransitive section, but as I note in the section on Intransitive observations, I believe the verb
hernu “to watch, to see” in F2 is transitive.

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 The optative was found rarely in the corpus sample, and exclusively with the
ho copula as in (84e) (je hos ‘whatever it may be’), in what I consider to be fixed
expressions.6 In any case, there were no transitive examples with subjects to confirm
the judgment from respondents that both the ergative and nominative are possible
in sentences like (84d).

I encoded 142 clauses as imperative of which 126 were transitive non-modal main
clauses. As might be expected with imperatives, the subject was elided 93% of the
time, and the ergative was found on 3 of the remaining 9 clauses in the
imperative.

The particular usages of these three verb forms are such that the subject is rarely
present, but there does appear to be some variability in the usage of the ergative and
nominative here as well, with the nominative being somewhat more common.

Subordinate Clauses

In both perfective and imperfective subordinate clauses, there is substantial variation

between ergative and nominative expression of the transitive St . This is at least
partially because a main clause nominative subject can control an ergative subject in
a subordinate clause (or an ergative may control a nominative), and either may be
elided. This makes it particularly difficult to discern precisely which argument is the
subject of a subordinate clause, and in the corpus I erred towards including an overt
subject even if it may have originated in the main clause. This is a complex topic
that I cover more thoroughly in the syntax section, where I will discuss the judgments
of elicitation respondents.

In the NNSP sample, I distinguished three different types of subordinate clauses.

The first of these are adverbial clauses in which the verb form is unmarked for
6. I believe that the form is commonly used in blessings and as a more formal form of the imperative
(garnu hos, ‘I wish it were that you do (that)’, which I would suspect is the origin of the honorific
imperative form garnus, ‘Do (that)’).

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person or tense but rather takes a (typically perfective) adverbializer. For example,
from the verb khā-nu ‘to eat’, there is khā-era ‘eating and ...’, khā-dā(kheri) ‘while
eating’, na-khā-ikana ‘without eating’, khā-epacchi ‘after eating’, khā-epani ‘despite
eating’, etc. Here are some examples from the NNSP sample with overt subjects. In
both (85a) and (85b) the first subordinate clause is transitive and perfective, but in
the first example the subject is ergative and in the second it is nominative.

(85) a. aba [ hāmi-le tyas-lāi pariwartan gar-dākheri ] arājāktā

now [ we-erg it.obl-acc change do-while ] chaos
ā-yo
come-perf.3.sg
‘Then, while we were changing it, chaos arose.’ [V001002003; M13]

b. [ khaire-haru ke yasto ghām-mā kapaḍā.sapaḍā phukāl-era ]

[ white.person-pl what like.this sun-loc clothes.red remove-conj ]
ghām-mā bas-iraheko huncha [ jyān sek-ā-era ]
sun-loc lie-prog.3.sg [ body cook-caus-conj ]
‘In this heat, white people tend to take off all their clothes and lie in the
sun, cooking their bodies.’ [V001002005; M26]

Of the 297 examples of clauses of this type, 171 were non-modal transitive clauses.
The subject was elided 74% of the time, and of the remaining 48 examples the
ergative was expressed 54% of the time in adverbial clauses .
The second form of subordinate clauses is nominal relative clauses, which use
either the -eko perfective participial or the -ne nonfinite marker.

(86) a. yahā~ ta pheri [ inḍibhijual na-di-ne niem ]N P

here foc again [ individual neg-give-nonfin rule ]N P
cha
cop.pres.3.sg
‘Here there is a rule against individuals giving (tips to guides).’ lit. ‘Here
an individuals-not-giving-rule exists.’ [V001002005; M7]

~-haru-le
b. uhā [ agillo ṭim-le gar-eko pariwartan ]N P -lāi
pro.hon-plural-erg [ first team-erg do-perf change ]N P -acc
mānnetā di-na ...
acceptance give-non.fin ...

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 ‘They give acceptance to the changes made by the first team...’ lit. ‘They
give acceptance to the first-team-made-changes...’ [V001002003; M13]

The corpus contained 67 examples of these clauses, of which 27 were transitive

non-modal constructions and 11 of these had overt subjects. There was only one
example of a perfective participial with an overt subject, and it is ergative. Among
the ten non-perfective forms, the ergative was expressed once.

The final type of subordinate clause uses the non-finite markers (-na, -ne, -nu).
In this category I also include the usage of -ne as an unmarked verb form in simple
main clauses, as in (87c).

(87) a. [ gaĩḍā-le tapāi-lāi hān-na ] ā-eko cha ki

[ rhino-erg you.hon-acc hit-non.fin ] come-pres.perf.3.sg or
chaina āja-samma ?
cop.3.sg.neg today-until ?
‘Has a rhino ever come to attack you or not?’ [V001002005; M7]

b. [ yo nayā~ caṭaut maile cāhĩ nibedan gar-na ]

[ this new idea I.erg top propose do-non.fin ]
khoj-eko chu
search-pres.perf.1.sg
‘I have sought to propose this new idea.’ [V001002003; M13]

c. hāmi-le di-ne, haina ?

we-erg give-nonfin, cop.3.sg.neg ?
‘We usually give (that much), right?’ [V001001001; M9]

d. [ pujāri ra shikshak-le us-lāi samāt-na ] prayās

[ priest and teacher-erg pro.obl-acc catch-non.fin ] try
gar-e
do-perf.3.pl
‘The priests and teachers tried to arrest him.’ [BB]

Of the 201 examples of this type, 134 were transitive non-modal constructions,
of which 83% had elided subjects, and of the remaining 23 clauses, the ergative was
expressed 52% of the time. Figure (4.7) summarizes these findings.

153
 Case Adverbials (n=48) Nominals (n=11) Nonfinite (n=23)
ERG 54% 18% 52%
NOM 46% 72% 48%

Figure 4.7: Corpus Results: ERG/NOM in Subordinate Clauses

In sum, both the ergative and nominative are possible for all the transitive sub-
ordinate clauses examined. The nominalized clauses are a special case, because the
nominal subject is typically the head of the noun phrase, and thus the nominative is
more common here (the main clause may be intransitive or copular).

It is somewhat surprising that the adverbials should pattern similarly to the non-
finite clauses, because most of them are straightforwardly perfective and we should
expect the ergative to be categorical.7

To understand the picture better, it would be necessary to categorize and tab-

ulate each of the adverbial markers as perfective or non-perfective. However, it is
clear that even when the adverbial clearly has perfective reference, there is a nomi-
native/ergative alternation. The most common adverbial subordinate marker in the
corpus is -era, which clearly has perfective reference, and of the 31 instances of this
marker used with a transitive verb and an overtly realized subject in the corpus, the
ergative marker appeared 42% of the time. Of course, the issue is complicated by the
fact that the St of the subordinate clause may or may not be coreferential with the
main clause, which may be nominative or ergative.

4.1.2 Intransitive Clauses

According to Li (2007), the -le marker may be found on the Si of certain intransitive
clauses in Nepali like the examples below.

7. Many contain the perfective -e-. A separate piece of evidence for perfective reference here is the
behavior of the verb jānu ‘to go’, which has a separate perfective allomorph (jā/gā): hence jā-nu,
jā-na, jā-ne, but gā-eko, gā-era, gā-epani.

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 (88) a. kukur-haru/kukur-haru-le rāti bhak-tyo
dog-pl/dog-pl-erg night bark-pst.hab.3.sg
‘Dogs would bark at night.’ [PK]

b. ma/maile nāc-dai-chu
I.nom/I.erg dance-cont-pres.1.sg
‘I am dancing.’ [TD]

c. mero didi-ko chori/chori-le dherai khel-chin

my sister-gen daughter/daughter-erg much play-pres.3.f.sg
‘My sister’s daughter plays a lot.’ [ST]

d. sahuji/sahuji-le jahile.pani khok-nu huncha

shopkeeper/shopkeeper-(erg) always cough-pres.3.sg.hon
‘The shopkeeper is always coughing.’ [ST]

This would appear to undermine the usage of the term “ergative,” because in such a
system we expect (Si and O) to pattern together in opposition to St . If the distribution
of -le is precisely the same on the Si of intransitive clauses as it is for the St of transitive
clauses, then the term “subject marker” might be more apt. Another possibility is that
Nepali has a Split-S pattern, in which some intransitive subjects take ergative marking
and others do not. In an active-inactive alignment unergative intransitives (clauses
in which the Si is semantically an Agent) are marked but unaccusative intransitives
(clauses in which the Si is semantically a Patient) are not. In this case, the term
“agent marker” might be more apt. Alternatively, marking could vary based on some
semantic property of the referent, such as volitionality or agency. In Hindi, certain
intransitive clauses that describe actions like coughing or tripping can be marked if
the action is done volitionally. This is an example of Fluid-S marking.

In Nepali, the distribution of -le on the Si is dependent upon the particular pred-
icate in the clause. The overarching generalization is that there is a great deal of
variation: particular lexical items exhibit particular distributions, marking is possi-
ble in some verb forms but not others, and different speakers have slightly different
intuitions. There is potentially more dialectal variation. One of my elicitation re-

155
spondents was a clear outlier: MG was the only consultant who dispreferred every
instance of ergative marking on an intransitive verb. He grew up in a Gurung-speaking
community and moved to the western city of Pokhara as a young adult.

There are, however, some categorical generalizations, and, MG aside, all elicitation
respondents followed the pattern described by Li (2007):

(1) The ergative is disallowed with unaccusative predicates (e.g. paglinu “melt”,
paknu “cook”, khasnu “fall”, dubinu “sink”)

(2) The ergative is never allowed with telic unergative predicates (e.g. āunu
“come”, jānu “go”, pharkinu “return”)

(3) The ergative is possible with atelic unergative predicates (e.g. nācnu “dance”,
gāunu “sing”, nuhāunu “bathe”, khelnu “play”)

These generalizations were mostly borne out in the Kathmandu survey (Figure
4.8), with some exceptions to be discussed below. In the NNSP sample, however, there
were almost no examples of ergative marking with intransitives, because motion verbs
and unaccusatives were much more common than other types of intransitives.

I coded 463 clauses as intransitive, of which 244 were non-modal clauses with
overt subjects in any verb form. These included 22 tokens of stative verbs (basnu
‘to sit/stay/live’, dukhnu ‘to hurt’, and suhāunu/suḍnu ‘to suit/match/look nice’),
1 token of a semelfactive (karāunu ‘to shout’), 44 tokens of aspectual verbs (lāgnu
‘to attach/feel’, rahanu ‘to stay/appear’, roknu ‘to stop’, saknu ‘to finish’, thālnu
‘to begin’), 21 tokens of atelic motion verbs (ghumnu ‘to visit’, hiḍnu ‘to walk’),
120 tokens of telic motion verbs (āunu ‘to come’, āipugnu ‘to arrive’, bāghnu ‘to
escape’, dauḍnu ‘to run’, jānu ‘to go’, pugnu ‘to reach/arrive’, niklanu ‘to come out’,
niskinu ‘to get out’, pharkinu ‘to return’, uṭhnu ‘to get up/arise) and 47 tokens of
other unaccusative verbs (baḍnu ‘to increase’, katnu ‘to be deducted’, milnu ‘to be
arranged’, moṭāunu ‘to get fat’, parnu ‘to happen/cost’, pāunu ‘to receive’).

156
 Figure 4.8: Ergative Marking Results for Intransitive Clauses

Out of these 244 clauses, the ergative was present in only ten utterances. Of these
ten utterances, seven were cases in which the Si is coreferential with a transitive
subject in another clause. As discussed in the 5.1.1, the ergative is generally allowed
in such cases:

(89) [ tapāĩ-le tyo jasto “jangal wāk” jā~-daakheri ] bāgh

[ you.hon-erg that how “Jungle Walk” go-while ] tiger
dekh-nu bhaeko cha ki chaina ?
see-pres.perf.hon.3.sg or cop.pres.3.sg.neg ?
‘Going on a jungle walk, have you ever seen a tiger?’ [V001002005; M7]

In the next subsections, I will discuss the presence of alternations for unaccusative
intransitives, verbs of emission, and telic and atelic motion verbs. Unlike the situation
in Hindi, volitionality does not appear to play a role in these alternations. I conclude
that every single instance of -le on the sole argument of an intransitive clauses should
actually be analyzed as ergative marking on the St of an underlyingly transitive clause.
Thus “ergative” is the best term to describe this marker in Nepali.

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Unaccusative Predicates

All elicitation respondents agreed that the ergative could not mark the Si in any unac-
cusative intransitive clauses. Note that this prohibition on the ergative holds whether
the Si referent is animate or inanimate, and whether the verb form is perfective or
imperfective.8

(90) a. sikka buĩ-mā guḍ-yo

coin.nom floor-loc roll-perf.3.sg
‘The coin rolled across the floor.’ [ST]

b. jahāj ādi-mā dubi-yo

ship.nom storm-loc sink-perf.3.sg
‘The ship sank in the storm.’ [BA]

c. ma jāni-jāni lāḍ-ẽ
I.nom purpose trip-perf.1.sg
‘I tripped on purpose.’ [TD]

d. ghām-mā giu pagli-yo

sun-loc ghee.nom melt-perf.3.sg
‘The ghee melted in the sun.’ [BA]

e. khānā pak-dai-cha
food cook-cont-pres.3.sg
‘The food is cooking.’ [BB]

f. u moṭā-yo
pro get.fat-perf.3.sg
‘(S)he has gotten fat.’ [SB]

In the Kathmandu Survey, questions K3 and K4 examined clauses with the unac-
cusative imperfective verbs umlanu “boil” and paglinu “melt” (Figure 4.9). Curi-
ously, the former follows the expected pattern while a surprisingly large number of
respondents (roughly half) accepted the ergative on “to melt.”9
8. Other unaccusative verbs I examined include khasnu “fall”, tātnu “heat up”, and khiinu “wear
out”.

9. After consulting with SB about this, I believe this is due to a flaw in the question design. The

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 In the NNSP sample, the following unaccusative intransitive verbs appeared with
overt subjects in any verb form: baḍnu ‘to increase’, dukhnu ‘to hurt’, katnu ‘to be
deducted’, milnu ‘to be arranged’, moṭāunu ‘to get fat’, parnu ‘to happen/cost’, pāunu
‘to receive’, roknu ‘to stop’, saknu ‘to finish’, suhāunu/suḍnu ‘to suit/match/look
nice.’10 In total, there were 56 instances of unaccusative intransitive verbs with
overt subjects, of which 0% were marked with the ergative.

Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

umlanu “to boil”
ERG (n=28) 1.29 3.6% 89.3%
NOM (n=28) 4.79 96.4% 0.0%
paglinu “to melt”
ERG (n=27) 2.93 48.1% 40.7%
NOM (n=27) 4.70 96.3% 3.7%

Figure 4.9: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Unaccusative Predicates

In some languages there are transitive predicates in which neither the St nor the O
are semantically agents. For such transitive unaccusatives, we might expect ergativity
to be disallowed in Nepali considering that ergative marking appears to be disallowed
with unaccusative intransitives.

Some examples of such predicates in English include This film stars Jonny Lee
Miller, I need a passport, and These lentils need/lack/require salt. For Nepali, these
sentences are typically expressed with copular constructions (yo film-ko hero Jonny

respondents who accepted the ergative here were from many different regions of Nepal including
Kathmandu, and SB believes that it is unlikely to be a result of dialect variation. The response
included an instrumental (Chaina, tara ghamko kiran-le ghiu-(le) paglielā “It hasn’t, but the ghee
will melt with the sunshine.”) One respondent commented that there was a mistake on this question
because both (a) and (b) were identical (when in fact they differed on whether the ghiu had an
ergative marker). Every respondent with one exception scored the bare form higher or as high.

10. Many of these verbs are reflective of the fact that half of the sample interviews were recorded
in a marketplace. Additionally, the most frequent of these verbs, milnu and pārnu, which occurred
37 times, have additional aspectual properties and may take clausal complements. I have counted
pārnu as intransitive in the frame us-laai das rupiyā~a pār-cha (it-dat ten rupees costs), although
Schmidt (1993) calls it transitive. The verbs roknu, saknu, and pārnu are also used in various modal
constructions.

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Lee Miller ho ‘This film’s hero is Jonny Lee Miller’; dal-mā nun kami cha’ ‘In the
lentils salt is lacking’) or impersonal/passive constructions ((ma-lāi) pasporṭ cahincha
‘A passport is needed (by me)’). The best examples of such predicates I could find
actually require ergative marking, but in each case one could make the argument that
the St is an agent:

(91) a. gaiḍā-haru-le hāti-lāi gher-e

rhino-pl-erg elephant-acc surround-perf.3.pl
‘The rhinos surrounded the elephant.’ [BB]

b. jangal-le upatyakā-lāi gher-yo

forest-erg valley-acc surround-perf.3.sg
‘The forest covered the whole valley.’ [BB]

c. kamilā-haru-le khānā-lāi ḍhāk-e

ant-pl-erg food-acc cover-perf.3.pl
‘The ants covered the food.’ [BB]

Unergative Semelfactives/Verbs of Emission

For the verbs khoknu ‘to cough’, karāunu ‘to shout’, and bhaknu ‘to bark’, elicitation
consultants found the ergative to be possible in both perfective and imperfective verb
forms.

(92) sahuji/sahuji-le jahile.pani khok-nu huncha

shopkeeper/shopkeeper-(erg) always cough-inf hon.pres.3.sg
‘The shopkeeper is always coughing.’ [ST]

(93) neta/neta-le karāu-cha

politician/politician-(erg) shout-pres.3.sg
‘The politician shouts.’ [BA]

(94) kukur-haru/kukur-haru-le rāti bhak-chan

dog/dog-pl-erg night bark-pres.3.pl
‘The dogs bark at night.’ [PK]

There was some variation in the precise judgments: TD expressed the intuition that
the ergative is obligatory for bhaknu ‘to bark’ in in the perfective, and ST expressed

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the same intuition for khoknu ‘to cough’, but in general consultants found the option-
ality to extend to the perfective.
For other predicates, the ergative was categorically rejected in the perfective and
imperfective.

(95) paale run-cha / ro-yo

guard cry-pres.3.sg / cry-perf.3.sg
‘The guard cries/cried.’ [BA]

(96) chorā chāḍ-cha / chāḍ-yo

child vomit-pres.3.sg / vomit-perf.3.sg
‘The child vomits/vomited.’ [ST]11

(97) naika hās-che / hās-in

actress laugh-pres.3.f.sg / laugh-perf.3.f.sg
‘The actress laughs / laughed.’ [BA]

The generalization appears to be that predicates which express involuntary actions

disallow the ergative marker. Judgments differed between consultants with the verb
kāmnu ‘to tremble,’ with ST rejecting the ergative and BA accepting it.

Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

khoknu “to cough”
ERG (n=28) 4.14 67.9% 10.7%
NOM (n=28) 4.07 75.0% 7.1%
runu “to cry”
ERG (n=28) 4.86 21.4% 67.9%
NOM (n=28) 2.04 96.2% 0.0%
hā~snu “to laugh”
ERG (n=27) 4.67 33.3% 51.9%
NOM (n=27) 2.59 100.0% 0.0%

Figure 4.10: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Verbs of Emission

In the Kathmandu survey, questions F1, F3, and F4 tested respondent judgments
on the verbs khoknu ‘to cough’, runu ‘to cry’, and hā~snu ‘to laugh’, respectively.
11. SB notes that this term is a little dated, and the (transitive) bāntā garnu ‘to do vomit’ is a
better translation for ‘vomit.’

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The results (Figure 4.10) follow the same pattern. Sentences with both ergative and
nominative subjects score high with khoknu, while the nominative is heavily preferred
~snu.
and the ergative dispreferred with runu and hā
Verbs of this type were not present in the NNSP sample, with the exception of
one instance of karāunu ‘to shout’ with an overt (nominative) subject.

Ergativity and Volitionality in the Intransitive Domain

In Hindi certain intransitive verbs have a nominative/ergative alternation conditioned

by volitionality. If an action is performed on purpose, the subject may be marked in
the ergative. We might expect the same alternation to exist in Nepali, where a wider
range of intransitive clauses accept ergative marking. However, this does not appear
to be the case:

(98) ma jāni.jāni lāḍ-ẽ

I.nom purposefully trip-perf.1.sg
‘I tripped on purpose.’ [TD]

Elicitation respondents categorically rejected the ergative in (98). Even for intran-
sitives which allow an alternation between nominative and ergative, this alternation
does not appear to be conditioned by volitionality. In (99), the context of the first
example is that a shopkeeper is politely coughing to get the attention of a browsing
customer, while in the second example the shopkeeper is coughing uncontrollably be-
cause of a cold. Both ergative and nominative are available in both contexts, which
indicates that volitionality is not a conditioning factor here.

(99) a. sahuji/sahuji-le jāni.jāni khokh-nu bhayo

shopkeeper-erg purposefully cough-inf hon.perf.3.sg
‘The shopkeeper coughed on purpose.’ [BA]

b. ciso-ko karan-le sahuji/sahuji-le khokh-nu bhayo

cold-gen reason-instr shopkeeper-erg cough-inf hon.perf.3.sg
‘The shopkeeper coughed because he had a cold.’ [BA]

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 This is significant because it suggests that the -le marker does not come with a
presupposition that the subject is acting volitionality. While volitionality might be
a factor in whether ergative marking is available on particular lexical items (khoknu
‘to cough’ vs. runu ‘to cry’), a more general explanation would simply be that verbs
like runu and hā~snu are unaccusatives in Nepali, while khoknu is unergative.

Telicity and Motion Verbs

Li notes that ergative marking is disallowed with unergative predicates which are
telic, meaning that they are aspectually bounded. The examples given by Li are all
verbs of motion which are bounded by a spatial path, and in agreement with Li my
elicitation consultants uniformly rejected the ergative in such cases. The results of
the Kathmandu survey (Figure 4.11) confirm these intuitions.

(100) bhariyā pokhara-bāṭa pharki-yo

porter pokhara-abl return-perf.3.sg
‘The porter returned from Pokhara.’ [ST]

(101) neta lumbini-mā gā-yo

politician lumbini-loc go-perf.3.sg
‘The politician went to Lumbini.’ [ST]

(102) bhaĩsi ā-yo!

water.buffalo come-perf.3.sg
‘The water buffalo has come!’ [AG]

The ergative is also rejected with other verbs that are bounded by a path of
motion: basnu in the meaning of ‘to sit’, uṭhnu as ‘to stand/to rise’, ubhinu ‘to stand
up’, bhāgnu ‘to escape’, ciplinu ‘to slip’, niklanu ‘to come out’, niskinu ‘to get out’,
pasnu ‘to enter’, khasnu ‘to drop.’
This is contrasted with atelic motion verbs like hiḍnu ‘to walk’, ghumnu ‘to visit’,12
dagurnu ‘to run’, and kudnu ‘to rush.’ These verbs also describe motions, but they
12. As opposed to the unaccusative ‘to spin.’

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 Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)
jānu “to go”
ERG (n=28) 1.46 7.1% 85.7%
NOM (n=28) 4.82 92.9% 0.0%
āunu “to come”
ERG (n=28) 1.64 7.1% 85.7%
NOM (n=28) 4.79 96.4% 0.0%
pharkinu “to return”
ERG (n=27) 1.55 7.4% 81.5%
NOM (n=27) 5.00 100.0% 0.0%

Figure 4.11: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Telic Intransitives

are unbounded activities, and Li notes that the ergative is possible here. However,
the judgments of my elicitation consultants differ from Li’s description: they reject
the ergative with atelic motion verbs in sentences like (103).

(103) a. u din.bhāri hiḍ-yo

pro.nom day.full walk-perf.3.sg
‘(S)he walked all day.’

b. u kud-dai-cha
pro.nom rush-cont-pres.3.sg
‘(S)he is rushing.’

c. u stupa-wāri.pāri ghum-yo
pro.nom stupa-around visit-perf.3.sg
‘(S)he circumnambulated at the stupa.’

However, SB and BB note that the ergative becomes possible with such verbs if they
are specifically construed with a bounded path of motion, as in (104):

(104) a. u/us-le dui kilometer hiḍ-yo

pro.nom/pro.obl-erg two kilometer walk-perf.3.sg
‘(S)he walked two kilometers.’

b. u/us-le saya meter kud-dai-cha

pro.nom/pro.obl-erg hundred meter rush-cont-pres.3.sg
‘(S)he is sprinting a hundred meters.’

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 c. u/us-le stupa-wāri.pāri das paṭak ghum-yo
pro.nom/pro.obl-erg stupa-around ten time visit-perf.3.sg
‘(S)he circumnambulated ten turns at the stupa.’

In fact, SB finds this to be true with the generally stative vācnu ‘to survive/live’,
which otherwise resists ergative marking:

(105) u/us-le jiwān rāmrari vāc-yo

pro.nom/pro.obl-erg life well live-perf.3.sg
‘They lived their life well.’

It would appear that ergative marking is possible with at least some atelic verbs of
motion (and states) only when they are construed as transitive (e.g., “walk” vs. “walk
two kilometers”; “live” vs. “live your life”). The effect is to provide a bounded path of
motion. However, this presents a puzzle. Why should ergative marking be disallowed
with lexically-encoded telicity (in verbs like pharkinu ‘to return’) but allowed when
generally atelic lexical verbs are construed as bounded?

Motion verbs cross-linguistically behave in a way that straddles the boundary

between unaccusative and unergative (Levin et al. 1995, Narasimhan et al. 1996). Li,
following Perlmutter, includes ‘to go’ and ‘to come’ in a list of unaccusative verbs,
but also refers to them as taking agentive subjects (in contrast with more clearly
unaccusative predicates like bhatkinu ‘to collapse’).

It is likely that verbs like āunu ‘to come’, jānu ‘to go’, and pugnu ‘to reach’ are
unaccusative, because they are quite often found with non-agentive subjects. For
example, when water is being poured into a cup at a meal, the cup’s recipient might
say Pāni pugyo. “That’s enough water” (lit. “The water has arrived/reached”). When
electricity is restored after a blackout, one hears the cry “Bātti āyo!” “The lights have
come!” When giving directions, the subject of these verbs is often a location, e.g. Dui
kilometer pacchi pul āuncha “After two kilometers a bridge comes.”13 These are all
13. These examples come from personal experiences in Nepal.

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examples in which the literal English translation is infelicitous because “go” and
“come” typically require a volitional subject. So the issue with most of these telic
motion verbs is not that they are telic but rather that they are (lexically) unaccusative
whether the subject is agentive or not.

Unergative Atelic Predicates and “Do” Light Verbs

Elicitation respondents generally find the ergative to be possible on verbs which de-
scribe activities. The exception below is (106d), for which RM strongly preferred
the nominative form, but in other situations khelnu ‘to play’ may take an ergative
marker.14

(106) a. ma/maile naac-dai-chu

I.nom/I.erg dance-cont-pres.1.sg
‘I am dancing.’ [TD]

b. pāle/pāle-le dhyān di-era her-dā-cha

guard/guard-erg attention give-conj watch-arch.pres.3.sg
‘The guard always watches carefully.’ [BA]

c. prayek bihāna sahuji/sahuji-le nuhān-cha

every morning shopkeeper/shopkeeper-erg bathe-pres.3.sg
‘The shopkeeper bathes every morning.’ [BA]

d. sab bacā-haru bahira khel-irah-e-chan

all child-pl outside play-prog-perf-pres.3.pl
‘All the children have been playing outside in the courtyard.’ [RM]

In the Kathmandu survey, on the other hand, the ergative was strongly preferred
in an example with hernu ‘to watch’, while it was strongly dispreferred with nācnu
‘to dance.’

14. Other predicates in which I observed a nominative/ergative alternation include gāunu ‘to sing’,
dhyān garnu “to focus”, jagada garnu “to fight”, relax garnu “to relax”, sunnu ‘to hear’, and pāuḍnu/
pāuḍi khelnu ‘to float/to swim.’

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 Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)
hernu “to watch”
ERG (n=28) 4.93 100.0% 0.0%
NOM (n=28) 2.15 14.8% 63.0%
nācnu “to dance”
ERG (n=28) 2.03 19.2% 6.9%
NOM (n=28) 4.92 100.0% 0.0%

Figure 4.12: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Unergative Atelic Verbs

In this domain there is more individual variation in speaker judgments. For ex-
ample, TD expressed the intuition that the ergative is required in the perfective for
nācnu ‘to dance.’ Thus, it has the same pattern as a transitive verb:

(107) hijo mero *bhāi/bhā-le naac-yo

yesterday my *little.brother/little.brother-erg dance-perf.3.sg
‘Yesterday my little brother danced.’

ST and BA did not share this intuition, finding the bare form to be acceptable in
perfective verb forms.
Some of these verbs that I have categorized as intransitive are probably underly-
ingly transitive. The object may be elided particularly if it is indefinite, so a transitive
verb may have only one overt argument. This is almost certainly the case with khelnu
“to play,” which for most if not all speakers requires an ergative marker when it is
overtly transitive:

(108) maile hijo bakunda khel-eko thiẽ

I.erg yesterday football play-pst.perf.1.sg
‘I was playing football yesterday.’ [RM]

This is likely also the case with hernu ‘to watch’ and sunnu ‘to listen’. The
argument of these predicates commonly takes an ergative case marker in the perfective
whether or not there is an overt object. However, for some speakers khelnu can also
be construed of as intransitive. BA noted, with some surprise, that the nominative
form was perfectly acceptable:

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(109) prahāri khel-yo.
police.officer play-perf.3.sg
‘The police officers played.’ [BA]

This is the source of the observed variation between speakers. Verbs which are
transitive may be construed as intransitive in certain situations, and this allows for
a nominative form of the Si in the perfective.
In fact, nearly all of the activity verbs in which there is a nominative/ergative
alternation may be considered transitive: for nuhāunu ‘to bathe’ there is an implied
reflexive, while the object of gāunu ‘to sing’ and nācnu ‘to dance’ is a song and a
dance. The underlying object for verbs of emission is that which is emitted: the spit
in thuknu, the noise of laughter in hā~snu, or the cry in karāunu.
In Nepali there is a productive process of verb derivation which consists of an
uninflected noun and the verb garnu ‘to do.’ Some examples include māya garnu
‘to love’, dhyān garnu ‘to focus/meditate’, jagada garnu ‘to fight’, biswās garnu ‘to
believe’, prayog garnu ‘to try’, kam garnu ‘to bargain’, nibedhan garnu ‘to propose’,
gaph garnu ‘to gossip’, and chalphal garnu ‘to discuss.’ It is also common in loanword
derivations, for example calculate garnu ‘to calculate’ (found in the corpus) and relax
garnu ‘to relax.’ The incorporated noun cannot take case marking or inflection, and
if the derived predicate is transitive, the overall behavior of the St and O is as it
is in any ditransitive verb. However, if the derived predicate is intransitive (as in
dhyān garnu or relax garnu), ergative marking is still required in the perfective. So
syntactically these light verb constructions are transitive.
However, there are some unergative activities for which ergative marking is com-
pletely disallowed. Li notes that sutnu “to sleep” and uḍnu “to fly” do not take
ergative marking, and I add to this list luknu “to hide.” My elicitation consultants
were in agreement that ergative marking is not possible in these clauses. These are
also all verbs in which there is not plausibly an underlying object.15 Taken together,
15. The verb uḍnu ‘to fly’ can only refer to an entity like a bird flying under its own power. The

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the natural conclusion is that most if not all ergative marking on intransitives is in
fact ergative marking on underlyingly transitive clauses.

Ergativity and Transitivity

If we consider all clauses with ergative/nominative alternations to be underlyingly

transitive, then we do not need to appeal to telicity or agentivity to explain the split
between so-called intransitives which have ergative/nominative alternations and those
which do not:

(1) Unaccusative intransitives do not ever take ergative marking, because -le seems
to be restricted to underlying external subjects.

(2) Telic motion verbs like jānu ‘go’ and pugnu ‘reach/arrive’ are unaccusative.

(3) Activity verbs like khelnu ‘to play’ and gāunu ‘to sing’ are typically transi-
tive, but for some speakers they can be construed as intransitive in the right
circumstances.

(4) Unergative motion verbs like hiḍnu ‘to walk’ are typically intransitive, but for
some speakers they can be construed as transitive in the right circumstances.

This analysis stipulates that all transitive clauses in which we find an ergative
case marker on the subject contain two participants, an St and an O, whether or not
they are overtly realized. However, this is not the case for copular clause, because
they do not describe an event but rather describe a state that holds for a particular
entity:

4.1.3 Ergativity in Copular Clauses

Ergativity is completely disallowed in all copular clauses of the language. All elicita-
tion respondents uniformly reject ergative marking in any type of copular clause:
verb uḍāunu ‘to fly’ with the causative morpheme is used for operating a flying machine like a plane.

169
 Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)
J1
ERG (n=28) 1.18 0.0% 92.9%
NOM (n=28) 5.00 100.0% 0.0%
J2
ERG (n=26) 1.31 0.0% 92.3%
NOM (n=27) 4.37 85.2% 11.1%
J3
ERG (n=28) 1.54 10.7% 85.7%
NOM (n=28) 4.93 92.9% 3.6%
J4
ERG (n=28) 1.54 10.7% 85.7%
NOM (n=28) 5.00 100.0% 0.0%
J5
ERG (n=27) 1.22 0.0% 96.3%
NOM (n=27) 4.93 100.0% 0.0%

Figure 4.13: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Copulas

(110) sunita chalākh cha

Sunita-erg clever cop.pres.3.sg
‘Sunita is clever.’ [AG]

(111) ma kabir ho
I poet cop.pres.1.sg
‘I am a poet.’ [BA]

(112) tyo kholā ṭhulo huncha, haina ?

that river big cop.fut.3.sg, cop.3.sg.neg ?
‘That river becomes big (swells), right?’ [V001002005; M24]

(113) baghutā ekdam.ai kushi bhayo

frog very.emph happy cop.perf.3.sg
‘The frog became very happy.’ [AG]

(114) yo-bhandā kati garmi thyo butwal-tira

this-comp how hot cop.pst.3.sg Butwal-toward
‘Compared to this, how hot it was near Butwal.’ [V001002005; M24]

(115) [ hāmi ghum-eko chaũ ], [ dui-tin jānā bha-era ],

[ we visit-pres.perf.1.pl ], [ two-three person cop-conj ],

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 jangalai tetti-kai, hātti.sātti na-li-ikana
jungle.emph that-gen.emph, elephant.red neg-take-without
We wandered, being two or three people, like that in the jungle, without
taking an elephant or anything. [V001002005; M7]

Section J of the Kathmandu Survey (J1-J5) examined copular clauses. The results
for each question are in Figure (4.13). The ergative is markedly dispreferred. In the
NNSP sample I coded 703 clauses as copular, of which 481 (68%) had overt subjects.
Out of these 481 copular clauses, only one clause had an ergative marker on the
argument.

Brief observations on the dual copula system

There are two present-tense copulas cha and ho, which Butt and Poudel (2007) charac-
terize as stage-level and individual-level copular predicates respectively. It many
cases they do seem to distinguish between temporary stages and inherent, lasting
properties:

(116) a. ma birāmi chu/#ho.

I sick cop1.1.sg/cop2
‘I am sick (currently).’ [RM]

b. ma jahile birāmi ho.

I always sick cop2
‘I am always sick.’ [RM]

(117) a. mero ghar amerikā ho/#cha.

my home America cop2/cop.3.sg
‘My home is America.’ [RM]

The grammars of Acharya (1991) and Schmidt (1993) note that cha and ho are present
tense forms of the verb hunu ‘to be.’ The meaning of cha is described as existential
and the meaning of ho as identificational (Acharya 1991: 154-155). While cha
inflects for person, gender, number, and honorificity, ho typically only inflects for

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number.16
The cha form of the copula is used to express possession (both alienable and
inalienable). It is also typically the form used with adjectival copular clauses and
locational copular clauses.

(118) Possession (alienable and inalienable)

a. mero gaḍi cha

my car cop.pres.3.sg
‘I have a car.’ [RM]

b. merā dui jānā bhāi chan

my.pl two ct younger.brother cop1.pres.3.pl
‘I have two younger brothers.’ [RM]

(119) Adjectival copulas (both stage-level and individual level)

a. yo kukur birāmi cha

this dog sick pres.3.sg
‘This dog is sick.’ (Stage-level) [RM]

b. yo camij nilo cha

this shirt blue pres.3.sg
‘This shirt is blue.’ (Individual-level) [RM]

(120) Location: (both animate and inanimate)

a. prakāsh bhānsā.khoṭā-mā cha.

prakash kitchen-loc cop1.3.sg
‘Prakash is in the kitchen.’ (Animate) [RM]

b. pāras france-mā cha.

paris france-loc cop1.3.sg
‘Paris is in France.’ (Inanimate) [RM]

From these examples it is clear that cha can be used with individual-level predications.
It is in fact the default for copulas describing properties both temporary and lasting.
16. However, the plural hun may also be used as an honorific, and the 1st person singular is
pronounced either ho or hũ. Acharya (1991) does give a full inflectional paradigm for ho, but my
impression from conversation and corpus analysis is that these inflections are quite rare in spoken
Nepali.

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 The ho form of the copula is the only copula available for nominal copular clauses:

(121) mero ghar america ho / #cha

my home america cop2 / #cop1.pres.3.sg
‘My home is America.’ [RM]

(122) tapāĩ doctor hun / #hunu-huncha

you doctor cop2.hon / #cop1.pres.2.sg.hon
‘You are a doctor.’ [RM]

However, in addition to being the required copula with nominal copular clauses, ho is
also possible in every environment in which cha is used: adjectival copulas, possession,
and locative copulas. While ho can be used anywhere, cha is somewhat restricted.

(123) Possession (alienable and inalienable)

a. mero gaḍi ho
my car cop2
‘I have a car.’ [RM]

b. merā dui jānā bhāi hun

my.pl two ct younger.brother cop2
‘I have two younger brothers.’ [RM]

(124) Adjectival copulas (stage-level and individual level)

a. yo kukur birāmi ho
this dog sick cop2
‘This dog is sick.’ [RM]

b. yo camij nilo ho
this shirt blue cop2
‘This shirt is blue.’ [RM]

(125) Location: (both animate and inanimate)

a. prakāsh bhānsā.khoṭā-mā ho.

prakash kitchen-loc cop2
‘Prakash is in the kitchen.’ [RM]

b. pāras france-mā ho.

paris france-loc cop2

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 ‘Paris is in France.’ [RM]

A better way to characterize this distinction is as an instantiation of a contrast

between characterizing and particular claims about the subject. A characterizing
claim holds over a disparate and larger interval than a particular claim, and ho would
appear to be restricted to characterizing claims, while cha can be either. Deo (2017)
takes this distinction to characterize the double copula system of Marathi, and we
might expect similar distinctions to be found across Indo-Aryan languages. A some-
what similar distinction is proposed by Roy (2013) as a more precise formulation of
stage/individual contrasts in Irish, French, and Spanish.

More work needs to be done to adequately characterize the nuances of semantic

meaning and pragmatic usages of the two copulas.17 I bring the distinction up here
to emphasize that even in the copular domain the difference is not simply a stage-
level/individual-level distinction.

4.1.4 Summary of the domains of ergative marking

Ergative marking is restricted to transitive clauses and some unergative intransitive

clauses which are arguably transitive underlyingly. It is obligatory in clauses with
perfective reference and varies with the nominative elsewhere. Motion verbs, which
are telic and possibly unaccusative in Nepali, pattern with the unaccusatives. This is
summarized in Figure (4.14), in which light regions represent obligatory marking, dark
regions represent disallowed marking, and grey regions represent a possible alternation
between marked and unmarked subjects.

I provided an example for each cell of the chart. For transitive clauses, the verb
is garnu ‘to do.’ For unergative intransitives, the verb is khelnu ‘to play.’ For unac-
17. This is a dissertation-length topic in itself. See Sánchez-Alonso (2018) for a treatment of the
semantic and pragmatic features of the dual copula system in Spanish varieties, and Harris (2019)
on properties of the copular system in African-American English.

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cusative intransitives, it is aaunu ‘to come.’

Figure 4.14: Summary of the Domains of Ergativity in Nepali Clauses

For imperfective verb forms, I gave a main clause example of the verb in simple
form and a subordinate clause with the -ne marker. In the perfective domain, I used
the perfective form and the conjunctive -era. Note that in the perfective subordinate
clause cell I have marked -le as alternating, although whether or not alternation is
possible may be entirely determined by the properties of the main clause.

For the rest of this section, I restrict my focus to the gray regions of nomina-
tive/ergative alternation to investigate whether properties of the event structure cor-
relate with the expression of the ergative. In particular, I am interested in the top
left cell representing the alternation in the transitive imperfective verb forms of main
clauses.

4.1.5 Individual-Level Predication

Depending upon the context, verbs in the simple present form may refer to events
which are ongoing, future-oriented or habitual. The following examples are taken

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from a list of the fifty-four main clause transitive sentences with present imperfective
reference in the NNSP sample.

(126) a. her-erai kurā gar-chu ma

see-conj.emph conversation do-pres.1.sg I
‘Having seen (you), I’m talking to you.’ (Ongoing) [V001001001; M3]

b. ma pheri ghar-mā gā-era phon gar-chu

I again home-loc go-conj phone do-pres.1.sg
‘I will go back home and then call you.’ (Future) [V001002003; M13]

c. tyas-le ek ghanṭā tin liṭar khā-idin-cha

it.obl-erg one hour three liter eat-ben-pres.3.sg
‘It (the generator) consumes three liters (of petrol) an hour.’ (Habitual)
[V001002005; M7]

The individual-level predication theory presumes that the ergative will be found
with the habitual interpretation of the simple present, because the event is a lasting
property of the subject rather than a single spatio-temporally constrained event. This
is true for the examples presented above. The ergative marker is present on the subject
in (126c), the sentence with a habitual reading, and it is absent in the examples that
describe ongoing and future-oriented events.

On the one hand, this theory does seem to capture a common intuition that
the form with the ergative describes an event that is some way more central to the
identity of the subject. Furthermore, Verbeke and De Cuypere (2015) conclude that
individual-level predication is significantly correlated with ergative-marking in their
corpus analysis.

However, we saw from the section 4.1.1 that the ergative/nominative alternation
exists for imperfective verb forms which are unambiguous. For example, the alter-
nation exists for the continuous form, which is unambiguously stage-level. So even
if this is an explanation in the simple present, this is an explanation for a limited
portion of the imperfective domain. This is reminiscent of the argument that the

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ergative discriminates participants when there is a possibility of confusing them: it
might explain ergative marking in those particular cases, but it cannot be the entire
story.

A bigger issue is that while ergative marking can be associated particularly with
habituality in one interpretation, the nominative can be associated with habituality
under a different interpretation.

Judgments on Ergative Marking and Habitual Interpretations

I presented each of my elicitation consultants with some version of one of the Nepali
minimal pairs in (127a), (127b), and (127c).

(127) a. mero kākā-(le) rājdhāni-mā gāḍi cil-āu-nu huncha

my uncle-(erg) capitol-loc car drive-caus-pres.3.sg.hon
‘My uncle is driving/will drive/drives cars in the capitol.’ [BA]

b. prakāsh-(le) curoṭ khān-cha

Prakash-(erg) cigarette eat-pres.3.sg.neg
‘Prakash is smoking/will smoke/doesn’t smoke cigarettes.’ [PK]

c. sunita-(le) kitāb lekh-cha

sunita-(erg) book write-pres.3.sg
‘Sunita is writing/ will write/ writes a book.’ [TD]

Many consultants immediately noted a difference in interpretation with the erga-

tive version that had something to do with habituality. MG, UK, and ST noted
that the interpretation for (127a) with the ergative is that this is the man’s occupa-
tion, whereas without it the interpretation is that he will perform the action later.
Similarly, in (127c) implies that Sunita is a poet.

PK’s intuition for (127b) was slightly different: a habitual interpretation is likely
in both cases, but the unmarked form suggests that smoking is just a general tendency,
while the ergative marked form suggests that smoking is his habit, i.e. that Prakāsh
curoṭ khāne maanche ho (‘Prakash is a cigarette smoker.’) It is something more central

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to his character, and as such the statement is likely to be a negative value judgment
about his character. It is an interpretation of the predicate as characterizing. ST,
on the other hand, had the intuition that the reading was ongoing in both cases,
but with the unmarked form Prakash is currently smoking by himself, and with the
marked form he is under some external pressure to smoke, perhaps from a group of
friends. In this case the subject is specifically not the initiator of the event, but is
rather the effector of the event.
Other consultants did not find habituality to be an differing factor in these sen-
tences. Surprisingly, TD, UK, BB, and SB had the opposite intuition: it is the
bare form of the transitive subject that suggests a habitual interpretation, while the
ergative-marked subject is amenable to a future or ongoing interpretation. SB ob-
served that the ergative suggests a particular instance of the event, while the bare
form suggests an action:

(128) a. u kām gar-cha

pro.nom work do-pres.3.sg
‘(S)he does work.’ [SB]

b. us-le kām gar-cha

pro.obl-erg work do-pres.3.sg
‘(S)he does a job.’ [SB]

(129) a. u māsu khān-daina

pro meat eat-pres.3.sg.neg
‘(S)he eats meat ( i.e., is not a vegetarian).’ [SB]

b. us-le yo māsu khān-daina

pro.obl-erg this meat eat-pres.3.sg
‘(S)he will not eat this meat.’ [SB]

The interpretation of the object is relevant here. Note that kām can be glossed in
English as ‘job’ or ‘work,’ and when the subject is nominative, the interpretation of the
object is indefinite, that is, the subject does work generally, while with the ergative
the interpretation is (nonspecific) definite: doing a particular work. In (129b) the

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presence of an unambiguously definite object (yo māsu, ‘this meat’) correlates with
ergative (SB finds the nominative form here to be awkward), while the bare form
correlates with a general activity of meat-eating.

These observations are in line with the predictions of the Transitivity Hypothesis,
because there is a positive correlation between one marker of high transitivity, the
presence of the ergative, and another marker of high transitivity, individuation of the
object and/or boundedness of the event. The interpretation of kām as ‘work’ is closer
to an intransitive interpretation “(S)he works” precisely because the object is less
individuated. Conversely, the absence of the ergative correlates with an interpretation
that can be interpreted as intransitive. The opposite judgment, that the ergative
correlates with a habitual interpretation, is more problematic for the Transitivity
Hypothesis.

This variation does not appear to correlate with the speaker being from a par-
ticular geographical region or background. It is not the case that different speak-
ers have internalized a different grammatical rule. Rather, these varying intuitions
indicate that the phenomenon under consideration is based on a pragmatic infer-
ence rather than a semantic correlation. Without a particular context, there are
many possible interpretations of these situations, and while it may be the case that
simple present clauses with an ergative subject are somewhat more likely to be inter-
preted as individual-level, it is quite possible for the ergative to be present without an
individual-level interpretation, and also possible for the ergative to be absent without
a stage-level interpretation. Consider the following:

(130) a. Context: My friend and I are being served food. My friend is not a
vegetarian generally, but is avoiding meat at the moment. I need to
advise my hosts not to serve my friend goat curry.

b. u/us-le māsu ahile khān-daina tara sākāhāri

pro/pro.obl-erg meat now eat-pres.3.sg.neg but vegetarian

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 hoina
cop.3.sg.neg
‘(S)he won’t eat meat now, but (s)he’s not a vegetarian.’ [BB]

If the usage of the ergative presupposes an individual-level interpretation of the event,

then the version of (130b) with an ergative should be infelicitous in this context. In
fact, the sentence should be a contradiction, given the assumption that “not eating
meat” and “being a vegetarian” are the same thing. Most speakers who have an
intuition -le about habitual readings nevertheless accept both versions of (130b) as
acceptable sentences.18 This tells us that the usage of -le is not associated with a
presupposition.

In Chapter 6 I argue that the interpretation that accords with the Transitivity
Hypothesis is due to the meaning of the marker itself as an effector of the event.
Emphasizing the subject as an effector is associated with an event in which the effect
and completion of the event is profiled rather than its initiation. The other interpre-
tations in which the ergative correlates with a characterizing predicate are due to an
interpretation in which the marked element is given prominence as the subject of a
categorical proposition.

In the Kathmandu survey, I attempted to investigate a correlation between erga-

tive marking and habitual readings by setting up three question pairs in which the
responses were identical and the questions set up an individual or stage-level context:

C1
Q: tapāĩ-ko kākā ke garnu huncha? What does your uncle do?
A: mero kākā-(le) rājdhāni-mā gāḍi calāunu huncha. My uncle drives a car in the
capitol.

18. SB was an exception, finding the bare form to be a contradiction.

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C2
Q: tapāĩ-ko kākā bholi ke garnu huncha? What will your uncle do tomorrow?
A: mero kākā-(le) rājdhāni-mā gāḍi calāunu huncha. My uncle will drive a car in
the capitol.

C3
Q: surya sākāhāri ho ki? Surya is a vegetarian, right?
A: hoina, surya-(le) māsu khāncha. No, Surya eats meat.

C4
Q: surya timilāi tarkāri thapi diũ? Surya, should I give you more vegetables?
A: hoina, surya-(le) māsu khāncha. No, Surya will eat meat.

C5
Q: prabhu upanyāskār ho ki? Prabhu is a novelist, right?
A: ho, prabhu-(le) māyā prem sambandhi upanyās lekcha. Yes, Prabhu writes
romance novels.

C6
Q: ki prabhu-le pheri upanyās lekhcha? Is Prabhu going to write another novel?
A: ho, prabhu-(le) māyā prem sambandhi upanyās lekhcha. Yes, Prabhu will write
a romance novel.

As I mentioned in 2.3.2, there are some issues with spelling and unnatural phrasing
with some of these questions (particularly with C3 & C4), so the results of the survey
must be viewed with some caution. However, if the question itself is poorly phrased
then this should be reflected in a low response for both the nominative and the

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ergative judgments overall, and in general this is not what we find.

Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

C1 (habitual)
ERG (n=27) 4.41 88.9% 7.4%
NOM (n=27) 4.30 85.2% 3.7%
C2 (future)
ERG (n=28) 4.04 75.0% 17.9%
NOM (n=27) 4.00 70.4% 14.8%
C3 (habitual)
ERG (n=28) 4.43 89.3% 7.1%
NOM (n=28) 3.93 71.4% 14.3%
C4 (future)
ERG (n=28) 4.25 85.7% 14.3%
NOM (n=28) 4.00 78.6% 10.7%
C5 (habitual)
ERG (n=26) 4.38 88.5% 4.8%
NOM (n=26) 4.04 69.2% 7.7%
C6 (future)
ERG (n=28) 4.5 0 85.7% 0.0%
NOM (n=28) 3.54 57.1% 17.9%

Figure 4.15: Survey Results: ERG/NOM with Simple Present Transitive Clauses

The results from Figures (4.15) and (4.16) do not align with the theory that erga-
tive marking correlates with a habitual reading, nor with the theory that nominative
marking correlates with a habitual reading. While some pairs were rated higher than
others overall, in most cases both the ergative and nominative were rated highly in
both situations. This indicates that all responses are generally acceptable to most
speakers. The overall trend is that the ergative is simply judged slightly higher overall
for both individual-level and stage-level readings of the given sentences. The largest
disparity is in C6.19
We might expect there to be individual variation in whether the ergative or the
19. This may be because of the “Le in the question requires a -le in the answer” rule; in general I
tried to avoid putting an ergative in the question, but in C6 the subject in the question is marked
ergative, as opposed to nominative in the other questions. Yet even when the question subject is
nominative there is still an overall bias towards the ergative in each case.

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 Figure 4.16: Ergative Marking Results in Survey Section C
Question ERG on Habitual NOM on Habitual ERG always NOM always All Equally Other
NOM on Future ERG on Future Preferred Preferred Preferred Patterns
C1 & C2 4 2 9 6 2 5
C3 & C4 1 1 13 3 2 8
C5 & C6 1 1 13 3 3 7

Figure 4.17: Survey Results: Individual Strategies for Ergative Marking in Section C

nominative is correlated with the habitual reading. It is possible that this aggregate
of responses could hide a number of distinct individual patterns. Figure (4.17) is a
breakdown of individual strategies. For each question, I looked at each individual’s
responses and noted whether (a) the ergative judgment was higher on the habitual
reading and lower on the future reading; (b) the ergative judgment was higher on the
habitual reading and lower on the future reading; (c) the ergative judgment was higher
for both readings; (d) the ergative was lower for both readings; (e) the ergative and
nominative judgments were identical in both cases; or (f) there was some other pattern
(e.g., the respondent didn’t answer a question, or the ergative and nominative were
judged the same in one reading but not another). The most common recognizable
pattern was that the ergative was preferred in each case, followed by the nominative
always being preferred. The least common patterns were the ones in which ergative is

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rated higher in one reading and lower in another. And no respondent followed exactly
the same strategy for each of the three questions. The Kathmandu survey clearly did
not find a correlation between individual-level predication and ergative marking.
In the NNSP sample, there were fifty-four transitive main clauses with predicates
in the simple present verb form. For each of these, I noted whether the referenced
events in the context of the discourse would be construed as habitual, ongoing, or
future-oriented. While determining this is not always straightforward, there were
some unambiguous cases of habitual readings with both nominative and ergative
subjects:

(131) a. bhitra.bhitra tyo gaĩḍā āl-mā khel-cha, haina

inside.red there rhinoceros lake-loc play-pres.3.sg, cop.3.sg.neg
? tyo tyo khān-eko thyã.
? there there dig-pst.perf.3.pl
‘Way inside there the rhinos play, right? We had dug right there.’ [V001002005;
M7]20

b. jhusilkirā-le tyo hāt-mā chun-cha

caterpillar-erg there hand-loc sting-pres.3.sg
‘Caterpillars sting you there on the hand.’ [V001002005; M7]

c. din-dainan ṭurisṭ-haru-le ṭips.sips jangal

give-pres.3.sg.neg tourist-pl-erg tips.red jungle
jā-ne-haru-lāi
go-non.fin-pl-dat
‘The tourists do not give tips or anything to those who go into the jungle.’
[V001002005; M8]

And there are some unambiguous cases of future-oriented readings with both nomi-
native and ergative subjects:

(132) tyāg ta ajhai tapāĩ-le khoj-nu huncha bhane, ma

tag foc still you.hon-erg search-pres.3.sg.hon cond, I
20. Arguably this is an intransitive construal of khelnu which would be an alternate explanation
for the lack of ergative marking on the subject.

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 lyā-idin-chu
bring-ben-pres.1.sg
‘If you’re still looking for the tag, I’ll bring it for you.’ [V001001001; M3]

(133) kasari - ma udāharaṇ din-chu

how - I.nom example give-pres.1.sg
‘How - I’ll give you an example ...’ [V001002003; M13]

(134) sāno bha-epani lāun-dina maile ta yo ta

small cop.perf-even wear-pres.3.sg.neg I.erg foc this foc
‘Even if it is smaller, I will not wear this.’ [V001001004; M9]

(135) yo lā-nu par-yo bhane, tei lān-chu hai

this take-non.fin need-perf.3.sg cond, that.emph take-pres.1.sg prt
maile
I.erg
‘If I have to take this one, I’ll that one as well.’ [V001001004; M7]

The tabulation of these results in Figure (4.18) indicates that ergative marking is
slightly more common with habitual readings, though it is not excluded from future
and ongoing readings, and in fact the ergative form is in the majority for each case.21
Case Future-oriented Habitual Ongoing Stage-Level Individual-Level
NOM n=12 n=5 n=1 n=13 n=5
ERG n=18 n=20 n=2 n=20 n=10
ERG Percentage 60.0% 66.7% 66.7% 60.6% 66.7%

Figure 4.18: Corpus Results: Individual Strategies for Ergative Marking in Section C

As I discuss in section 4.2.3, the ergative is more common when the subject is
interpreted as a kind (as in 131b), and the predicate in such cases will be individual-
level and have a habitual construal.
Overall the correlation between individual-level predication and ergative marking
is not strong, and is certainly not categorical. Rather, the presence of the ergative
21. I consider the ongoing and future-oriented readings to be stage-level and the habitual readings
to be individual-level. I have excluded sentences with the ability modal (-na saknu and the one
example in the cont verb form, leaving 48 sentences. I included the three sentences with verbs
which may be intransitive in the given context: khelnu ‘to play’ and polnu ‘to burn’ (e.g., ‘this jacket
burns (my skin)’. If we remove these examples the rate of ergative-marking with habitual readings
rises to 83%.

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is marked, and this has a pragmatic effect that is interpreted by the speaker. When
opposing interpretations are possible, it is due to multiple possible interpretations of
the clause as either a categorical proposition or as a prototypically transitive event.

4.1.6 Transitivity and the Event

Six of the properties listed in Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s transitivity prototype
relate to the interpretation of the event: Participants, Kinesis, Aspect, Punctuality,
Affirmation, and Mode. These were discussed in the Transitivity subsection of the
Theory section of this work. In considering potential correlations between ergative
marking and aspects of the predicated event, we would expect a correlation between
ergativity and highly transitivity with regards to these properties.

For Participants, we have seen that transitivity plays a role in the expression
of ergative marking, and in fact I have argued that there must be a subject and
(implied) object for ergative marking to be possible. Conversely, when verbs like
khelnu ‘to play’ are construed as intransitive, it becomes possible for a subject to be
nominative in the perfective domain. This accords with the Transitivity Hypothesis.

For Kinesis, the prediction is that ergative marking should be found on eventive
predicates as opposed to stative predicates, and indeed we find ergative marking to
be disallowed with stative intransitives.

A brief observation regarding Kinesis: TD and BB at different times expressed

the intuition that the ergative sounds better in clauses with verbs which are more
“action-oriented.” For example, BB preferred the ergative with the verbs kinnu ‘to
buy’ and khānu ‘to eat’ over verbs which had less tangible effects on the object like
bhannu ‘to say.’ This could suggest that kinesis plays a gradient role in the expression
of ergativity, but my evidence here is anecdotal. I leave the possibility for future
research.

For Aspect, the Transitivity Hypothesis predicts that if a correlation exists, erga-

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 Feature Predicted Correlation
Participants Yes
Kinesis -
Aspect Yes
Punctuality No
Affirmation -
Mode Yes

Figure 4.19: Ergative Correlations and the Event

tive marking will be correlated with telic construals of events or perfective verb mor-
phology. I have argued that ergative marking is obligatory in the perfective domain
and alternates with the nominative in the imperfective. This follows the predictions
of the Transitivity Hypothesis. Furthermore, I have argued against Li’s notion that
telic intransitives resist ergative marking while atelic intransitives allow it, and instead
argue that this is a generalization about unaccusativity rather than verbal aspect.

For Punctuality, the prediction of the Transitivity Hypothesis is that a potential

correlation between ergative marking and will favor punctual, instantaneous events
over durative ones. Here the apparent correlation between ergative marking and
habitual readings of the simple present goes against the prediction of the Transitivity
hypothesis, and I argue that this is due to the interpretation of the clause as a
categorical proposition.

For Affirmation and Mode, the prediction of the Transitivity Hypothesis is that
ergative marking will favor affirmative events rather than negative events, and will
favor realis over irrealis modes. The intuition is that an event is higher on the tran-
sitivity scale if it exists in the real world. As to the former, I have found no evidence
that ergativity is dispreferred on clauses with negation, but I have not examined the
question directly. As to the latter, we can compare three imperfective verb forms
which may describe future-oriented events: the Simple Present, the Definite Future,
and the Hypothetical Future (the Definite Future being the only one that cannot
also describe events which are not future-oriented). The intuitions of consultants and

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the corpus sample results indicate that the definite future is much more likely to be
marked than the hypothetical, with the simple present in between, which is reason-
able if we think of them as representing different degrees of certainty that an event
will occur.

4.2 Ergative marking and the Subject

Li (2007) argues that the animate/inanimate distinction constitutes a second ergative

split. The general observation that inanimate subjects must take ergative case is found
in Verma (1976) and Pokharel (1998) as well, but Verbeke (2011) brings up exceptions
and notes that this is not a categorical division but rather a strong tendency. Animacy
is a strong predictor of ergative marking in Verbeke and De Cuypere (2015). Pokharel
suggests that human referents are somewhat less likely to receive argument marking
than non-human referents, raising the possibility that the expression of ergativity
falls along the Nominal Hierarchy in a gradient manner. A split by animacy is in line
with the predictions of the Nominal Hierarchy, for which ergative marking should be
preferred on the right end of the hierarchy. NP-based splits are found in other Indo-
Aryan languages like Marathi, but these are typically in the pronominal domain.22
I find that ergative marking is more common on inanimate subjects, but this rep-
resents a tendency rather than a categorical split. I find ergative marking to be least
common on first person pronouns. Ergative marking is not gradiently scaled along
the entire Nominal hierarchy. Rather, ergative marking is sensitive to two factors in
two domains: in the pronominal domain, there is a clear distinction between Speaker
(first person pronouns) and all other pronouns. In the domain of common nouns, it is
sensitive to animacy, with ergative marking increasingly more common from human-
denoting common nouns to nonhuman-denoting common nouns to inanimate nouns
22. According to Li, ergative splits according to animacy are typologically rare, and this is sup-
ported by Fauconnier (2011).

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(in section 4.3 I argue that this follows a pattern of marking on unexpected subjects
based on the frequency of overt subjects of each type).

Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s only feature that relates to the interpretation of
the subject is agency. Ergative marking should correlate with high agency, which is
mentioned as a potential factor for Nepali by Verma (1976). Properties of Dowty
(1991)’s Agent Proto-role include being volitional, sentient, causing the given event,
moving in relation to the object, and existing independently. Næss (2004) takes the
relevant properties to be Controlling and Unaffected by the event, while Fauconnier
(2011) emphasizes the properties of being an Affector and Instigator of the event.

I find that ergative marking in Nepali is not correlated with properties re-
lated to Agency (volitionality, sentience, controlling, instigating). However, it is
correlated with properties related to causation and completion of the event. These are
related to the meaning of the -le marker as an effector. Secondly, it is associated with
kind readings of the subject, definiteness, and strong construals of quantifier. These
relate to the ergative as a marker of discourse prominence (as discussed particularly
in section 4.5).

4.2.1 The Nominal Hierarchy

For ergative languages with a split conditioned by the semantic nature of the NP,
the locus of the split is commonly within the pronominals. For example, Dyirbal
and Yidiny are Pama-nyungan languages in which the ergative marker is available
on all nouns and pronouns except the first and second pronouns (Dixon 1994: 83).
It is somewhat rarer for there to be a distinction between first and second pronouns,
and while the general rule seems to be for first person pronouns to be further to the
extreme left (e.g., the Nad eb language has ergative marking on second person but
not first person), there are some exceptions to this, such as in Ojibwe and Cheyenne.
For these Algonquian languages, the second person seems to be on the furthest end of

189
the hierarchy (Dixon 1994: 90). Within the Indo-Aryan language family, the Marathi
language has a split in the ergative morphology. As in Dyirbal, the ergative marker
is not available on the first and second person pronominal forms as it is elsewhere in
the language.

PK and BB expressed the intuition that the ergative sounds somewhat more nat-
ural with third person pronouns than first person pronouns. In one elicited scenario,
BB and his friend are at a clothing shop trying on shirts. The shopkeeper asks him
if he wants to buy anything, and BB shakes his head no and says,

(136) tara rām-le (cahĩ) yo shirt kin-cha

but ram-erg (top) this shirt buy-pres.3.sg
‘But Ram will buy this shirt.’ [BB]

The presence of the contrastive topic marker cahĩ is similar to the effect of con-
trastive topic intonation in English (“but RAM will buy this shirt.”) The ergative
is perfectly natural here and the sentence may sound a little odd without it. In an
alternate context, the shopkeeper asks Ram if he wants to buy anything and he shakes
his head no, and then the speaker says,

(137) tara ma (cahĩ) yo shirt kin-chu

but I (top) this shirt buy-pres.1.sg
‘But I will buy this shirt.’ [BB]

The speaker finds the ergative here to be somewhat stilted, although the only
difference in the context is that the subject is 1st person rather than 3rd person.
This intuition, as I show below, is supported by the NNSP corpus. As with animacy,
person appears to have an affect on the expression of ergative marking in a gradient
rather than an absolute way. In contrast to Dyirbal, it is the first person pronouns
that seem to pattern differently from the second and third pronouns (rather than the
first and second pronouns patterning together).

190
 In the Kathmandu Survey, there was one section (A) in which the question re-
sponses were subjects with inanimate referents. For the other trials, I attempted to
vary the types of subjects that were used in responses across the other sections. Figure
(4.20) and (4.21) show average judgments in transitive clauses with subjects which
were overt pronouns (always third person), proper names, other human nouns (e.g.
kākā ‘uncle’, pāle ‘guard’), other animate nouns (bāgh ‘tiger’, carā ‘bird’) and inani-
mate nouns (hāwā ‘wind’, asinā ‘hail’). While the ergative is judged higher in each
case, there is a clear trend towards dispreference of the nominative and preference for
the ergative as animacy decreases. The pronominal domain will be considered in the
discussion of corpus results. Note the overall trend in the nominal domain: the judg-
ments for Proper Nouns and Human nouns are almost identical, there is a marked
drop in preference for nominative forms on animate nouns, and another marked drop
on inanimate nouns.

Figure 4.20: Survey Judgments for Subject Type

We find a similar gradient pattern in the NNSP sample, although there is a dif-
ference between the pronominal and nominal domain. Of the 119 transitive present

191
 Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)
Pronouns
ERG (n=112) 4.31 83.0% 11.6%
NOM (n=112) 3.51 56.3% 26.8%
Proper Names
ERG (n=249) 4.32 83.1% 9.6%
NOM (n=249) 3.98 72.7% 10.8%
Human Nouns
ERG (n=465) 4.36 85.2% 08.8%
NOM (n=464) 3.99 73.1% 12.9%
Animate Nouns
ERG (n=165) 4.5 87.9% 9.7%
NOM (n=164) 3.1 45.1% 36.6%
Inanimate Nouns
ERG (n=137) 4.77 94.9% 1.5%
NOM (n=137) 2.16 18.2% 65.0%

Figure 4.21: Survey Results: ERG/NOM by Subject Animacy

tense non-modal main clauses in the sample, 56 have overt subjects. I also expanded
the sample to include all transitive imperfective clauses, either main clause or subordi-
nate. I included conditional constructions but excluded all other constructions. This
expanded sample represents all (transitive) domains under analysis, and consisted of
508 clauses, of which 119 have overt subjects.

In both cases, we find a particular pattern in the pronominal domain and a sepa-
rate but parallel pattern in the nominal domain. First person pronouns are nominative
the majority of the time, while the ergative form is in the majority for second and
third person pronouns. From the larger sample, it appears that ergativity is equally
as common on second and third person pronouns. In the nominal domain, ergative
marking is more common on inanimate arguments than animate arguments, although
there are a few examples of inanimate subjects in the nominative which suggests that
ergativity is not required on inanimate subjects.

There are no categorical splits, nor does the distribution of ergative marking gra-
diently follow the entire Nominal Hierarchy. Rather, animacy seems to be a property

192
negatively correlated with ergative marking in the nominal domain, while first person
pronouns are negatively correlated with ergative marking in the pronominal domain.
A simpler explanation for this pattern lies in the frequency of usage: first person
pronouns are the most frequent and are least commonly ergative-marked. Common
nouns are typically animate, and animate nouns are less likely to be marked than
inanimate ones.

1PRO 2PRO 3PRO Animate Inanimate

Transitive Present 37.5% 100.0% 85.7% 55.6% 75.0%
(n=24) (n=8) (n=7) (n=9) (n=4)
Transitive Imperfective 38.8% 72.2% 78.6% 48.0% 60.0%
(n=49) (n=18) (n=14) (n=25) (n=5)

Figure 4.22: Percentage of Ergative Marking on Overt Transitive Subjects

Inanimate Common Nouns

Because the instrumental and ergative -le are homophonous, it can be difficult to as-
certain whether a noun with inanimate reference is an ergative or an instrumental. In
Nepali, overt nouns with inanimate reference will always trigger third person agree-
ment, and do not have a distinction in gender. The only verbal agreement alternation
is the optional agreement in number. Li gives the following example of a sentence
with an inanimate subject:

(138) dhungā-haru-le jhāl phuṭ-ā-dai-chan

stone-pl-erg window break-caus-cont-scimpf.3.pl
‘The stones are breaking the window.’(Li 2007: 1467)

This sentence is ambiguous between the reading “The stones are breaking the
window” and “(They) are breaking the window with stones,” in which the verb agrees
with an omitted plural subject. The only way to disambiguate the two readings is to
provide a context in which it is clear that only one person is throwing stones (or, less
plausibly, that the stones are moving of their own accord).

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 In Nepali, many verbs like “break” are unaccusative in their root form. The
causative suffix -ā makes the form transitive. In many cases a more natural way to
express the situation would be with an unaccusative sentence like the following:

(139) dhungā-haru-le jhāl phuṭ-dai-cha

stone-pl-erg window break-caus-cont-impf.3.sg
‘The window is breaking because of the stones.’

Fauconnier (2011) provides evidence that this is a common situation crosslinguis-

tically. Many languages restrict the St to animate referents, and this is one reason
it is typologically rare for ergative splits to be based on animacy. Some languages
allow inanimate subjects, but the subjects must be “independent instigators.” So, for
example, “The gun shot the man” is grammatical but only if the gun went off by
itself. As far as I have been able to tell this is not the case in Nepali.
Examining the NNSP sample, Figure (4.23) is a breakdown of arguments with
inanimate reference in copular, transitive, and intransitive clauses. Here I have ex-
cluded passive constructions because the subjects are more object-like, but I included
other clauses and constructions. In the “All Animate” row I have included all argu-
ments with inanimate reference whether or not they were overtly represented in the
clause, and in “Overt Inanimate” I have included both animate common nouns and
demonstratives/pronouns with inanimate reference. The least common position for
arguments with inanimate reference is in St by far, but it does not appear to be the
case that they are completely disallowed. Nor are inanimate transitive subjects more
likely to be elided than inanimate transitive objects.

(St ) (O) (Si )

All Inanimate 85 813 220 630
Overt Inanimate 46 443 133 436
Percentage Elided 45.9% 45.5% 39.5% 30.8%

Figure 4.23: Arguments with Inanimate Reference in Different Argument Positions

The following sentences from elicitation sessions are those which I believe to be

194
relatively natural instances of inanimate subjects. All consultants strongly prefer the
ergative. The first example (140) was the only one in which a speaker expressed the
intuition that the nominative was possible.

(140) yo ukān-(le) ke bhan-cha

this expression-(erg) what say-pres.3.sg
‘What does this expression mean?’ [TD]

(141) traffic-ko durghadana-le harek din mānche mār-dai-chan

traffic-gen accident-erg every day person kill-cont-pres.3.sg
‘Traffic accidents kill people every day.’ [PK]

(142) bāḍi-le pul-lāi bag-āun-dai-cha

flood-erg bridge-acc sweep-caus-cont-pres.3.sg
‘The flood is sweeping away the bridge.’ [TD]

(143) hāwā-le scarf uḍ-āun-cha

air-erg scarf fly-caus-pres.3.sg
‘The wind takes the scarf.’ (The wind makes-fly the scarf) [TD]

(144) das barsha-mā yo rukh-le pahāḍ-ko drishya

ten year-loc tree-pl-erg mountain-gen view cover-pres.3.sg
cop-cha

‘In ten years, this tree will block the view of the mountains.’ [TD]

In the NNSP sample there are a small number of transitive present tense main
clause utterances in the NNSP sample which had overt inanimate subjects. Note the
nominative form on the subject in (147) and (148), which are counterexamples to Li’s
generalization that inanimate subjects must be ergative-marked. It may be possible
to conceive of a construal in which the argument marked by -le is an instrumental in
(145) and (149), but this is less plausible in the other examples.

(145) byāun-cha ke siks.handred-le ta

manage-pres.3.sg what six.hundred-erg foc
‘Six hundred (rupees) takes care of it.’ [V001001001; M3]23
23. The speakers are bargaining using English numbers.

195
(146) garmi-mā kaṭrāijko-le pol-can ta ma-lāi ke
summer-loc corduroy-erg burn-pres.3.pl foc I-acc what
‘In the summer, corduroy (fabric) burns me.’ [V001001004; F4]

(147) tara pol-daina dāi yo

but burn-pres.3.sg.neg older.brother this
‘But, brother, this (corduroy) doesn’t burn?’ [V001001004; F4]

(148) tapāĩ-lāi yo kalar dherai myāc gar-cha yo bhandā

you.hon-acc this color much match do-pres.3.sg this comp
‘This color matches you a lot better than this one.’ [V001001004; M7]

(149) kehi kharcai hũdaina sabai kampani-le

some expense.emph cop.fut.3.sg.neg all company-erg
behor-ihāl-cha
bear-put-pres.3.sg
‘There are no expenses. The company bears everything.’ [V001002005; M7]

4.2.2 Agency and Volitionality

In Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s conception of transitivity, there are two compo-
nents that relate to the interpretation of the subject. The first of these is Agency.
The referent of the St has a high level of potency; it is highly capable of carrying out
the action. The second of these is Volitionality, which relates particularly to the
intentions of the referent. While Dowty (1991)’s conception of an Agent Proto-Role
does not include a component that corresponds to the potential to affect the O (but
only the extent to which it moves in relation to and affects the O), it does have a
component of volitionality. Relating more specifically to OEM, Næss (2004) defines
a crucial property of the typical St as a “controller,” and Fauconnier (2011) defines
it as an “affector.”
As discussed in the subsection on intransitive clauses, the Si in certain unergative
intransitives of Hindi participate in an ergative/nominative alternation that is asso-
ciated with whether or not the act is volitional. However, this does not seem to be
the case in Nepali.

196
 Nor does the ergative appear to correlate with a high degree of agency. In the
following minimal pair, no elicitation respondents found the ergative to emphasize
that the speaker is engaging in the act of their own accord. In fact, ST expressed the
opposite intuition; the ergative is associated with a context in which the speaker was
coerced into smoking by someone else. PK’s intuition is that the ergative form with a
habitual reading is associated with a context in which the speaker has an addiction,
which also indicates lower potentiality.

(150) ma/maile curoṭ khān-chu

I.nom/I.erg cigarette eat-pres.3.sg
‘I am smoking a cigarette.’/ ‘I smoke cigarettes.’ [ST/PK]

Furthermore, I do not find agency nor volitionality to be at play in Nepali da-

tive/ergative modal alternations. Again, if anything the usage of the ergative corre-
lates with less agency. The ergative form correlates with a stronger obligation.

(151) a. pratyek din rām-le euṭā syāu khā-nu par-cha

every day ram-erg single apple eat-inf need-pres.3.sg
‘Ram must eat an apple every day.’ [AG]

b. pratyek din rām euṭā syāu khā-nu par-cha

every day ram single apple eat-inf need-pres.3.sg
‘Ram should eat an apple every day.’ [AG]

However, agency may be at play in nominative/ergative alternations in other dialects

of Nepali, particularly in communities where Nepali is an L2 for many speakers.
Ahearn (2001a) analyzed the emerging practice of letter writing among youths in the
Magar village of Junigau in Gandaki24 , which she related to a shift in the way young
people conceive of relationships, identity, and agency. She described an emerging
usage of the ergative marker:

24. Check this.

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 In standard Nepali, ‘le’ is required for the past tense, but in the dialect
spoken in Junigau it is often used for other tenses as well. When a person
appends this particle to a pronoun such as ‘I’ when speaking of the present
or future, the effect is an emphasis on agency. I have translated such
statements by italicizing the pronoun in question. (Ahearn 2001a: 41)

Ahearn’s observations indicate that the expression of the ergative is correlated

with agency at least in the Nepali spoken by turn-of-the-century adolescents of Ju-
nigau. Glossing this usage by italicizing the pronoun suggests that the subject is
marked with a particular prominence that emphasizes agency.25 It is an open ques-
tion whether this particular usage is found in other dialects of Nepali which allow
ergativity outside of the perfective. I found no evidence of it with any of my elicita-
tion respondents nor in my corpus and survey analysis.

4.2.3 Kind Readings of the Subject

Following the influential analysis of English bare plurals in Carlson (1977b), certains
noun phrases may be interpreted as the proper name of a kind, i.e., a reference to
a type rather than to a specific individual entity. A kind reading is particularly
associated with generic statements like “cats drink milk.” Such readings require a
bare plural subject in English, while in Nepali the plural marker is possible in such
statements but not required. Butt and Poudel (2007) note a correspondence between
-le and kind readings of the referent, providing the following example:

(152) rāuṭe-le jangel-ko kandamul khān-chan

Raute-erg forest-gen wild.edibles eat-pres.3.pl

25. Considering that there is potential influence from Magar, it would be useful to know whether
the Magar language participates in nominative/ergative alternations correlated with an emphasis
on agency, or whether this is entirely an innovation of young Nepali speakers. Madhav Pokharel
(p.c.) particularly associates the usage of the ergative in nonperfective clauses with the dialects of
the Magarrat, the historical territory of the Magars.

198
 ‘The Rautes (ethnic group) eat the wild edibles of the forest.’ (Butt and
Poudel 2007: 8)

All elicitation consultants do generally prefer the ergative on kind readings, although
they do not appear to be absolutely necessary for a generic interpretation:

(153) a. kukur-haru-le ãap khān-chan

dog-pl-erg mango eat-pres.3.pl
‘Dogs eat mangoes.’ [AG]

b. sabai birālo-haru-le māsu khā-e

all cat-pl-erg meat eat-perf.3.pl
‘All cats eat meat.’ [ST]

c. aṭāṅka-le harek din mānche mār-dai-chan

terrorist-erg every day person kill-cont-pres.3.sg
‘Terrorists are killing people every day.’ [PK]

d. cyā tyo ta pakeṭ na-bha-eko ta keṭi-haru-le

ugh those foc pocket neg-cop-perf foc girl-pl-erg
lāun-chan kere
wear-pres.3.pl evid
‘Ugh, those (jackets) without pockets, women wear those.’ [V001001004;
F4]

e. jhusilkirā-le tyo hāt-mā chun-cha

caterpillar-erg there hand-loc sting-pres.3.sg
‘Caterpillars sting you there on the hand.’ [V001002005; M7]

f. tala ā-yo, ani tyāhā~-bāṭa khaire, utā-ko

below come-perf.3.sg, and there-abl white.person, opposite.side-gen
khaire-haru, sab katā.katā bhāg-isak-yo,
white.person-pl, all what.direction.red escape-compl-perf.3.sg,
tyo kukharā-ko baccā cil-le cop-cha ni ?
that chicken-gen child eagle-erg charge-pres.3.sg and ?
tyastai bhayo
like.that.emph cop.perf.3.sg
‘Then (the rhino) came down below, and from there the tourists, the
tourists on the opposite bank, they all fled in different directions. You

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 know how eagles swoop down on chicks (and they scatter)? It
was like that.’ [V001002005; M26]

Of the 20 present tense non-modal transitive clauses with habitual readings, the three
examples given above are the ones that most clearly represent generic statements
about kinds, although there is some ambiguity in the interpretation of some subject
noun phrases as kinds or bare existentials. The ergative is present in all of these
relatively straightforward cases.

In the Kathmandu survey, Section G contained question responses containing

subjects with kind readings: results generally support this tendency:

(G1)
Q: Pradhān māntri-ko kārya ke ho? What is the job of a/the prime minister?
A: Pradhān māntri-(le) desh calāunu huncha. Prime ministers run the country.

(G2)
Q: maile kina paḍnu parcha? Why do I have to study?
A: Raamrā bidhyārthi-(le) pratyek din paḍ-chan. Good students study every day.

(G3)
Q: Gaĩdā-haru din bhara ke garchan? What do rhinos do all day?
A: Uni-haru-(le) ghā~s khānchan. They eat grass.

(G4)
Q: Pilot-haru kati ucāi-mā hawāijahāj uḍāũ chan? How high do pilots fly their planes?
A: Pilot-haru-(le) dherai jasto bāhra hajār meter-mā hawāijahāj uḍāũ chan. Pilots
typically fly their planes at twelve thousand meters.

200
(G5)
Q: Bagh-le kati belā janāwar-lāi sikār garlā? What time will tigers hunt animals?
A: Bagh-(le) rāti-mā janāwar-lāi sikā garlā. Tigers will usually hunt animals at night.

Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

G1
ERG (n=27) 4.26 81.5% 14.8%
NOM (n=27) 3.74 66.7% 11.1%
G2
ERG (n=28) 4.43 82.1% 3.6%
NOM (n=28) 4.00 77.8% 7.4%
G3
ERG (n=28) 3.96 71.4% 17.9%
NOM (n=28) 4.39 85.7% 7.1%
G4
ERG (n=28) 4.68 92.9% 7.1 %
NOM (n=28) 4.14 82.1% 7.1%
G5
ERG (n=26) 4.73 92.3% 3.8%
NOM (n=26) 2.92 34.6% 42.3%

Figure 4.24: Survey Results for Questions with Kind Readings (Section G)

The responses are in (Figure 4.24). The average response is generally positive for

201
both versions, but the ergative is somewhat preferred in each case, as is generally the
case throughout the data set. The exception of (G3), which is an outlier in two ways:
the question is given with the transitive subject in the nominative form, and it is the
only response in which the subject is realized as a pronominal rather than a noun.
The nominative is particularly dispreferred in (G5), which is likely due to the verb
form being in the hypothetical future.

4.2.4 Sets and Strong Construals of Quantifiers

Some elicitation respondents (particularly PK) expressed the intuition that usage of
the ergative has the effect of “pointing out” the marked entity from a group of possible
entities. Thus the following sentences might be a natural response to a question about
which of a group of employees is a smoker:

(154) #hari/hari-le curoṭ khān-cha

Hari/Hari-erg cigarette eat-pres.3.sg
‘Hari smokes cigarettes.’ [PK]

For PK the nominative form sounds odd here, although other speakers accepted it in
this context. This general preference for the ergative is stronger when the context set
is explicitly stated in the sentence itself:

(155) yahā~ madhye #hari/hari-le cahĩ curoṭ khān-cha

here among hari/hari-erg top cigarette eat-pres.3.sg
‘Among (those) here, Hari smokes cigarettes.’ [ST]

(156) cidiya.kanā-mā bhay-ekā saya waṭā cituwa-madhye saicālis waṭā

zoo-loc be-perf.obl hundred ct leopard-among forty.seven ct
#cituwa-haru/cituwa-haru-le aushadi khān-dai-chan
leopard-pl/leopard-pl-erg medicine eat-prog-pres.3.pl
‘Of the zoo’s one hundred panthers, forty-seven panthers are taking medicine.’
[BB]

(157) das waṭā-mā āṭh waṭā #birālo/birālo-le mācā khān-chan

ten ct-loc eight ct cat/cat-erg fish eat-pres.3.pl

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 ‘Eight cats out of the ten cats (that I own) eat fish.’ [BA]

Similarly, the ergative is preferred on strong construals of quantifiers. In (158) the

ambiguous quantifier kohi “some” has a weak interpretation, whereas in (159) it has
a strong interpretation; we are referring specifically to a group of Nepali students who
go to the university.26

(158) kohi.kohi/#kohi.kohi-le bakunda khel-dai-chan

some.red/some.red.pl-erg football play-cont-pres.3.pl
‘Some (Nepalis) are playing football.’ [RM]

(159) #kohi.kohi/kohi.kohi-le bakunda khel-dai-chan

some.red.pl/some.red.pl-erg football play-cont-pres.3.pl
‘Some (of the Nepalis) are playing football.’ [RM]

There is an alternation between two quantifiers dherai and dheraijaso, which would
both be translated into English as ‘many’ or ‘most.’ While dherai can be construed as
weak or strong, dheraijaso is unambiguously strong. All elicitation respondents had
a very strong intuition that the ergative is required here.27

(160) *dheraijaso/dheraijaso-le bakunda khel-dai-chan

many/many-erg football play-cont-pres.3.pl
‘Many (of the Nepalis) are playing football.’ [RM]

In each of these cases, the ergative form correlates with a definite interpretation of
the subject in which the speaker is drawing from a set which is explicitly stated or
presupposed in the discourse. For a more detailed explanation of this phenomenon,
see Lindemann (2016).

26. Quantifier reduplication marks plurality, hence kohi ‘some (singular)’ kohi.kohi ‘some (plural)’.

27. One explanation for this is that the quantifiers are unselective (Lewis 1975), and the ergative
is marking the subject to disambiguate it from what would otherwise be an interpretation where
dheraijaso quantifies over the event rather than the subject: “(Nepalis) play football some of the
time.” In any case, it is striking that the speaker judgments here were more categorical than with
any of the other ergative/nominative alternations with quantifiers.

203
4.2.5 Summary

There are no categorical splits based upon the semantics of the subject noun phrase.
Rather, ergative marking is gradiently less common on animate subjects, and it is
least common on first person pronouns. Rather than a smooth transition along the
Nominal hierarchy, ergative marking appears to be sensitive to different properties in
the pronominal domain than it does in the nominal domain. In section 4.3 I argue
that this is ultimately derived from the tendency for ergative-marking to be found on
unexpected (less frequently-occurring) subject types, which supports a markedness-
based analysis.

We do not find a correlation with agency or volitionality as in Hindi. Nor do we

find correlations with the subject being a controller or an instigator. This suggests a
division between those aspects of transitive subjecthood that relate to the instigation
of an event and those that relate to its causation and completion.

Feature Predicted Correlation

Dowty (1991)
Volitionality No
Sentience No
Causation Yes
Movement Yes
Næss (2004)
Controlling No
Unaffected Yes
Fauconnier (2011)
Affector No
Instigator Yes

Figure 4.25: Ergative Correlations and the Subject

Finally, ergativity is correlated with kind readings of the subject, definiteness,

and strongly-presupposed sets. These properties arise from the interpretation of the
ergative-marked element as the logical subject of a categorical proposition.

204
4.3 Argument Realization and Case Frequency in

the NNSP Sample

In this subsection I discuss the frequency of different types of arguments types in Si ,

O, and St position, as well as the properties of datives and instrumentals. The results
support the general conclusion that ergative marking is more common on subjects of
types which are rare (those with inanimate reference) and less common subject types
which are the most common (overt first person pronouns).

In the NNSP sample I analyzed argument realization by compiling the data on

participants in each utterance (excluding passive, modal, nominal subordinate, and
conditional constructions). For the core arguments in transitive, intransitive, and
copular clauses, I recorded whether the argument was overt or elided, and whether or
not it was case-marked. Additionally, I recorded dative and instrumental arguments
when they were present. This data set consists of 2,823 arguments.

I recorded 829 arguments in the St position of transitive clauses; the results are in
Figure (4.26). In this position, 65.6% of the arguments refer to speech act participants
(SAP). However, second person pronouns are more likely to be elided. First person
pronouns are by far the most frequent type of overt subject form in St position,
consisting of 46.6% of all overt arguments. Inanimate subjects in St are quite rare:
only 6.3% of subjects have inanimate reference. Arguments are also more likely to
be elided in this position: the argument is omitted 72.0% of the time.28 Of the 232
overtly realized transitive subjects, the subjects were in the ergative case 65.9% of
the time and (unmarked) nominative the rest of the time.

28. This accords with the morphological pattern described by Du Bois (1987) as the Avoid Lexical
A Constraint. Arguments in this position tend to be omitted. In fact, overtly-realized lexical items
(excluding pronouns) comprise only 6.2% of the total in this sample, a total remarkably close to the
6% reported by Du Bois in his Sacapultec sample. Du Bois argues that this derives from a pragmatic
constraint: the Given A Constraint describes the tendency for arguments in this position to be
given rather than new information.

205
 Figure 4.26: Transitive Subject Types in the NNSP Sample

The results for the 808 O arguments are given in Figure (4.27). The first graph
displays every object type, while the second is a breakdown specifically of those few
arguments that have animate reference. The main generalization is that O arguments
tend to have inanimate reference (88.8%). Only 2.1% of the arguments are expressed
as overt pronouns. Arguments are omitted less frequently: 44.1% of the objects were
elided. There is a strong tendency for accusative marking on pronouns (88.2%) and
for inanimate arguments to be nominative (95.8%), but these are not categorical
distinctions. It is apparently possible for an inanimate subject to have accusative
marking, and it is possible for a pronoun to go without.

The results for the 450 Si arguments in intransitive clauses are given in Figure
(4.28). The overall generalization is that there is no type of argument that is prolific
in this position. Arguments with animate reference make up 55.1% of the total.
The arguments are elided 52.9% of the time. The ergative, as expected, is overall
very uncommon, being present on just 4.7% of the overtly realized arguments. The
ergative is not found on any Si arguments with inanimate reference.

206
 Figure 4.27: Transitive Object Types in the NNSP Sample

The results for the 665 copular subjects are given in Figure (4.29). As with the O
position, the majority of arguments in this domain have inanimate reference (89.9%).
Also like the O position, relatively few arguments are omitted (35.4%). There are no
examples of ergative or accusative marking in the copular domain.

There are relatively few examples of oblique arguments marked in the corpus. The

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 Figure 4.28: Intransitive Subject Types in the NNSP Sample

Figure 4.29: Copular Subject Types in the NNSP Sample

results are given in Figure (4.30). Of the 64 examples of dative marking (-lāi in a
ditransitive or as an experiencer with copular or intransitive clauses), a surprisingly
high 14.1% of the arguments have inanimate reference. Another interesting finding

208
is infrequent nominative unmarked forms on 4.7% of the indirect arguments. Instru-
mental arguments, marked with -le, are quite rare. Only 7 examples were found in
the sample, and all are on arguments with inanimate reference.

Figure 4.30: Oblique Argument Types in the NNSP Sample

Figure (4.31) tabulates the expressed arguments in the 809 transitive clauses which
do not have indirect objects. Both arguments are overt 14.5% of the time, while both

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are omitted about a third of the time.29 This tendency toward the omission of one
or both arguments is less strong among the 26 ditransitive constructions, in which all
three arguments are overtly realized 42.3% of the time.

Both realized O Omitted St Omitted Both Omitted

14.5% (n=117) 39.1% (n=316) 12.6% (n=102) 33.9% (n=274)

Figure 4.31: Number of Expressed Arguments in Transitive Clauses

To summarize:

(1) The typical argument in the St position is a speech act participant. It is fre-
quently omitted, which correlates with a tendency to be given and topical.
Ergative marking correlates positively with the least frequent overt subject type
(those with less animate reference) and negatively with the most frequent overt
subject type (first person pronouns).

(2) The typical argument in the O position is inanimate, and is less frequently
omitted, thus more likely to be new information. The subject of copular clauses
follows the same pattern.

(3) The arguments in Si may be animate or inanimate, and are less likely to be
omitted.

(4) In most transitive clauses either or both the St and O are omitted, leading to
potential ambiguity, particularly if the St is unexpectedly inanimate or the O
is unexpectedly animate.

The generalizations about ergative marking and the subject in section 4.2 can be
partially explained by the frequency of different argument types in St position. In
29. If we consider only those which are lexically realized (excluding pronouns), then only 3.5%
of the clauses have two overtly realized arguments. This is comparable to Du Bois’ total of 1%
in the Sacapultec sample, formulated as the One Lexical Argument Constraint, which Du
Bois correlates with a pragmatic constraint on the number of new mentions typically allowed in an
utterance (the One New Mention Constraint).

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4.2 I noted that the ergative correlates positively with animacy and negatively with
first person pronouns, and these observation correspond straightforwardly with the
frequency of overt argument types. Ergative marking is more common on the least
common types of subjects.

However, it is not simply the case that ergativity marks a deviation from the
prototypical subject. Ergativity also correlates with definiteness (and topicality, as
I show in 4.5), which is a property of a typical subject. In chapter 6, I argue that
the correlations with animacy come from emphasizing the effector role, while the
correlation with topicality and definiteness arises from general markedness principles.

4.4 Ergative marking and the Object

The disambiguation hypothesis suggests that ergative marking will be more likely
either when the object is not overtly realized or when it is unmarked with the ac-
cusative case marker. Related to this point is the question of whether the systems of
accusative marking and ergative marking are completely separate or are interrelated,
as discussed by Dixon (1994). For example, ergative marking may be more likely
when accusative objects are unmarked in the accusative case. Or ergative marking
may be required when the object is more animate than the subject.

From the literature on object prototypes/proto-roles we may expect the ergative

to correlate with a highly affected object. Those aspects of transitivity that have to
do with the object include the following:

(1) Affectedness: the object is highly affected by the event in question. It may
come into existence as a result of the event, or it may be completely affected
rather than partially affected.

(2) Individuation: the object is human or animate, concrete, singular, and referen-
tial. Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s conception of the prototypical object is at

211
 odds with that of Aissen (2003) for whom the prototypical object is indefinite
and inanimate.

4.4.1 Ergative marking and the Realization of the Object

In a Nepali transitive clause, the direct object may be overt or elided. If it is overt, it
may be a bare nominative form or marked with the accusative -lāi postposition. This
can be conceptualized as three “settings” of argument realization: elided, unmarked
nominative, and marked accusative. The same three settings are available to the
transitive subject: as elided, unmarked nominative, or marked ergative.30

In investigating a possible global interaction between subject and object realiza-

tion, it is important to keep in mind that there will always be local motivations for a
particular realization. The semantic properties of the argument referent, along with
the exigencies of discourse structure (as discussed in the next subsection), have an
effect on whether the argument is overt and/or case-marked. A weak correlation be-
tween subject and object realization is potentially an epiphenomenon of these local
concerns, along with the overall tendency for arguments of certain types to be placed
in certain positions (as discussed in the previous subsection).

On the other hand, Dixon (1994) describes ergative split systems in which a global
interaction is grammatically operationalized. An example of this would be a system
in which ergative marking is possible only when the object is elided. This is also the
case for inverse case-marking languages, which can be thought of as languages with
ergative splits conditioned by a global interaction of the semantic properties of St
and O: inverse marking occurs when the object is higher along the Nominal hierarchy
than the subject.

It is clear that Nepali is not such a language, despite some evidence of the type
30. Realization of common nouns with a pronominal form is another possibility which I’m leaving
aside for now.

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that Abadie presents that suggests that ergative marking is required when the object
is omitted and it would otherwise lead to ambiguity. In these cases, the respondents
found the nominative form to correspond more closely to an interpretation in which
the overt argument is the object. This is true for (161c) even though that reading
does not make sense in the given context:

(161) a. Context: I just dropped a bit of samosa on the road. What will happen
to it?

b. carā-le khān-cha
bird-erg eat-pres.3.sg
‘A bird will eat (it).’ [TD]

c. carā khān-cha
bird eat-pres.3.sg
?‘(Something) eats bird.’ [TD]

(162) a. Context: What will happen if a leopard decides to attack a tiger?

b. bāgh-le mār-idin-cha
tiger-erg kill-ben-pres.3.sg
‘The tiger will kill (it).’ [BA]

c. bāgh mār-idin-cha
tiger kill-ben-pres.3.sg
‘(It) will kill the tiger.’ [BA]

In the Kathmandu Survey I included five questions of this type with omitted
objects. Figure (4.32) compares (transitive imperfective) clauses with omitted objects
to those with overt objects. It is not so much that there is a preference for the
ergative when the object is elided, but rather that the nominative form is somewhat
dispreferred for a significant proportion of speakers. Roughly half of the respondents
(a conspicuous 47.0%) dislike the nominative form when the object is elided.

In the NNSP I examined all transitive imperfective clauses (excluding conditional,

passive, and modal constructions). I examined whether or not the object was elided

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 Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)
Object Present
ERG (n=961) 4.38 84.9% 9.1%
NOM (n=960) 3.73 64.5% 19.6%
Object Elided
ERG (n=167) 4.63 92.8% 5.4%
NOM (n=166) 2.81 38.0% 47.0%

Figure 4.32: Survey Judgements for Transitive Clauses with Overt/Elided Objects

and whether or not the object was case-marked by -lāi. The results, presented in
Figure (4.33) are comparable to the survey judgments. We find a (slight) increase
in the percentage of ergative marking when the object is elided. However, we also
find an increase in ergative marking when the object is case-marked accusative rather
than bare nominative. These differences may or may not be significant, but even
if they are, it is clear that we are not dealing with a global interaction in which,
for example, ergative marking is completely required if the object is elided. The
percentage of ergative marking ranged from 46-64%. Accusative marking is heavily
associated with pronouns and definite animates, whereas elision is associated with
information structural concerns like givenness. It is likely that any patterning we see
here is an epiphenomenon of these local factors.

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 Figure 4.33: Corpus Results for Object Realization

Finally, we might consider ergative marking to be required particularly when the

O is higher along the Nominal Hierarchy than the St , such as when the subject
is an animate/inanimate common noun and the object is a local pronoun. These
constructions are quite rare (I found six examples among the transitive imperfectives),
but it appears that even this is more of a tendency than a requirement. The first
two are examples we have already seen, while the third is a psychological predicate
in which the subject, a feeling, is never case-marked ergative.

(163) a. garmi-mā kaṭrāijko-le pol-can ta ma-lāi ke

summer-loc corduroy-erg burn-pres.3.pl foc I-acc what
‘In the summer, corduroy (fabric) burns me.’ [V001001004; F4]

b. tapāĩ-lāi yo kalar dherai myāc gar-cha yo bhandā

you.hon-acc this color much match do-pres.3.sg this comp
‘This color matches you a lot better than this one.’ [V001001004; M7]

c. ani janawār-ko ḍar lāg-dainathyo ?

and animal-gen fear feel-pst.hab.3.sg.neg ?
‘And weren’t you afraid of animals?’ [V001002005; M7]

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4.4.2 Affectedness

Another property of high transitivity that we might expect to correlate with the us-
age of the ergative marker is the extent to which the object is affected by the action.
Fauconnier (2011) considers the two primary cluster properties of the transitive sub-
ject to be the ability to affect the object and instigate the action. We might expect,
then, that the ergative would be associated with a construal in which the object is
completely affected. However, this does not appear to be the case. In the follow-
ing example, the chair might be tipping slightly or tipping over completely, and the
nominative/ergative alternation exists either way:

(164) mai-(le) kursi-lāi lāṭa hān-chu

I.obl-(erg) chair-acc tip hit-pres.1.sg
‘I tipped the chair.’ [BB]

The difficulty here is in entangling properties of the event, for which a perfective aspect
would imply that the object was completely affected and an imperfective aspect often
implies that it has not been completely affected. We might expect an alternation in
something like “She was kicking the dog” and “She was kicking at the dog,” in which
the second sentence in English implies that she did not actually make contact with
her foot. However, this is not expressed by an ergative/nominative alternation in
Nepali.

(165) a. us-le kukur-lāi lāṭhe hān-dai-thyo

pro.obl-erg dog-acc kick strike-cont-pst.hab.3.sg
‘(S)he was kicking the dog.’ [BB]

b. us-le kukur-lāi lāṭhe hān-dai-thyo tara kukur-lāi

pro.obl-erg dog-acc kick strike-cont-pst.hab.3.sg but dog-acc
lāg-ena
contact-pres.3.sg.neg
‘(S)he was kicking the dog but missed.’ [BB]

Or consider the action of plucking out a splinter, and an alternation between ‘plucking

216
out a splinter’ and ‘plucking at a splinter.’ This too is not expressible by a simple
ergative alternation, but rather requires a larger clause to get a similar meaning
across:

(166) a. us-le ~ḍā

hāt-bāṭa kā jhik-dai-cha
3.pro.obl-erg hand-abl splinter pluck-cont-pres.3.sg
‘(S)he is plucking out the splinter in (her) hand.’ [BB]31

b. us-le hāt-bāṭa kā~ḍā jhik-ne khoj-dāi-cha

3.pro.obl-erg splinter pluck-inf try-cont-pres.3.sg
‘(S)he is trying to pluck out the splinter in (her) hand.’ [BB]

4.4.3 Connectedness to the Object

I have observed one effect of nominative/alternation as it relates to the interpretation

of the object, which I loosely refer to as “object connectedness.” Multiple elicitation
respondents (UK, BB, and SB) expressed a particular intuition about the minimal
pair below:

(167) a. ma ghar ban-āu-dai-chu

I house build-caus-prog-pres.1.sg
‘I am building a house.’ [UK]

b. maile ghar ban-āu-dai-chu

I.erg house build-caus-prog-pres.1.sg
‘I am building a house (for myself).’ [UK]

The ergative form emphasizes that the object has a closer relation to the subject.
In this case, respondents expressed the intuition I am building the house for myself.
I might or might not be a construction worker by trade, and in both cases the event
is ongoing, but with (167b) the implication is that I am building a house for myself.
A similar example came up in discussing the NNSP interviews with BB. In this
example, a customer is looking at t-shirts in a shop and tells the shopkeeper which
31. Double check this.

217
shirt he wants to buy.

(168) a. ma yo shirt lān-chu

I this shirt take-pres.1.sg
‘I will take this shirt.’ [BB]

b. yo shirt lān-chu mai-le

this shirt take-pres.1.sg I.obl-(erg)
‘I will take this shirt.’ [BB]

In the first context, he may be buying the shirt for a friend of his, but in the second
it is clear that the shirt is for him. The subject is postposed, which is somewhat more
common for ergative-marked clauses, as I discuss in section 4.5.1.

4.4.4 Summary

Associations between properties of the object and ergative marking on the subject are
less clearly evident. This should be expected, because the relationship between the
St is indirect and mediated by the event. There are no categorical observations, but
there is some evidence that ergative marking is more common with elided objects, thus
providing support for the disambiguation hypothesis. It may also be more common
on accusative-marked objects, which are more likely to be animate or human.

Feature Predicted Correlation

Elision (Possibly)
Affectedness No
Individuation Yes

Figure 4.34: Ergative Correlations and the Object

I do not find the ergative participating in alternations in which the object is

partially or completely affected by the event. Thus, I describe -le as an Effector
rather than an Affector: it must be involved in enacting the event, but it is not
necessarily implicated in its affect on the object. From section 4.1.5 on individual-
level predication we saw that one interpretation of the usage of the ergative was that

218
the object was more individuated (hence ma kām garchu “I’m doing work” versus
maile kām garchu “I’m doing a job”).

4.5 Ergativity and the Discourse

Ergative-marking is correlated with topicality and topic positions as well as categor-

ical propositions, which are ultimately expressions of discourse prominence.

4.5.1 Topic, Focus, and Word Order

Abadie (1974) and Verbeke (2011) both reject the notion that the le-marked element
will necessarily be in a focused position, but it may represent a tendency. The subject
of a transitive clause will typically be a topic, and topics are often elided because they
represent given information rather than new information. This is why the St position
has the greatest percentage of elided arguments (72%). In other words, topics are not
typically prominent. Marking a subject imparts some level of prominence (leading to
the claim of Grierson (1904a) and others that the ergative imparts emphasis), and
thus we might expect it to correlate with a contrastive topic.

There are not obvious prosodic contours associated with focus or contrastive topic
in Nepali, but rather discourse particles that impart focus (ta) and topicalization
(cāhĩ ). Furthermore, different positions in the clause are associated with different
information structural categories:

(169) [Topic] [Completive] [Focus] V [Background]

Elements in the Topic position and Background position contain old informa-
tion. The difference is that the topic element is prominent and background element is
not. Focus and Completive both provide new information, but focus is prominent
and background is not.

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 The elicitation respondents generally allowed both the nominative and ergative
whether the subject is focused or not, which suggests that there is no inherent and
categorical connection between discourse structure and the expression of the ergative.
There is perhaps a general tendency for the ergative marked element to contain given
information, which means that they tend to be avoided in strongly focal positions.

In the Kathmandu Survey I compared some questions in which the focus is on the
subject versus on the object. The results should be considered with caution because
the absence of discourse particles and the fact that every argument is overt leads
to somewhat awkward phrasing.32 Definitively testing a correlation between various
kinds of focus and the expression of ergativity will require a survey specifically ded-
icated to examining these factors. From the results in Figure (4.35) results we can
conjecture that nominative and ergative is available for most speakers, although the
nominative is dispreferred by a majority of speakers when the focus is on the object
rather than the subject. Ergative marking does not appear to be particularly corre-
lated with focus.

(B1)
Q: Ke keṭā-haru-le nayā~ cal.citra herlān? Will the boys watch the new film?
A: Keṭi-haru-(le) herdaichan tara keṭā-haru-le herdainan. The GIRLS are watch-
ing it but the boys aren’t.

(B2)
Q: Ke usle sabai masalā ta hāmilāi cāhine? Will s(h)e buy all the spices we need?33
A: U(Usle) sukumel kincha tara lwāṅ kindaina. (S)he will buy CARDAMOM but
not cloves.
32. As pointed out to me by SB in particular.

33. I believe a more natural phrasing would be Ke usle sabai hāmilāi cāhine masalā kincha.

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 Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)
G1
ERG (n=28) 4.25 89.3% 10.7%
NOM (n=28) 4.14 67.9% 7.1%
G2
ERG (n=28) 4.07 78.6% 21.4%
NOM (n=28) 3.21 42.9% 32.1%

Figure 4.35: Survey Results for Section B

It is fairly rare for an ergative-marked element to be followed by the focus marker

ta or the topic marker cāhĩ, although there are scattered examples in the corpus. I
found three examples with ta and three with cāhĩ.

(170) a. sāno bha-epani lāun-dina maile ta yo ta

small cop.perf-even wear-pres.3.sg.neg I.erg foc this foc
‘Even if it is smaller, I will not wear this.’ [V001001004; M9]

b. uniharu-le cāhĩ tyo mansthiti nai tyo ban-ā-era

pro.pl-erg top that mentality emph that build-caus-conj
ā-ekā hũdā rah-echan
come-perf.pl cop.while stay-mir.perf.3.pl
‘(As for the them), it is apparent that they arrive having built up that

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 sort of mentality.’

The focus and topic markers are not rare in the corpus; I counted 276 utterances
which contained a ta marker and 109 with cāhĩ.34 However, they are somewhat rare
on pronouns, and they are even rarer with ergative-marked pronouns. To take the
example of the first person singular, of the 64 overt instantiations of the nominative
form ma, it was followed by ta 9.4% of the time (n=6) and by cāhĩ 6.3% of the time
(n=4). In the ergative form, out of the 67 examples, the ta marker appeared 1.5% of
the time (n=1) and the cāhĩ marker 3.0% of the time (n=2).

Topic Completive Focus Background

Nominative (n=22) 68.2% (n=15) 9.0% (n=2) 4.5% (n=1) 18.2% (n=4)
Ergative (n=32) 50.0% (n=16) 9.4% (n=3) 6.3% (n=2) 31.3% (n=11)

Figure 4.36: Argument Positions in Transitive Present Clauses

I examined the St argument placement in the 54 transitive simple present non-

modal main clauses in the NNSP sample. I coded the placement as “Topic” if the St
is the first element, “Completive” if it is the second (for example, if it is preceded by a
core argument or any type of adverb or phrase), “Focus” if it is immediately preverbal
and also not the first element, and “Background” if the subject follows the verb.35
Figure (4.36) tabulates the results for nominative and ergative forms of the subject.
For St in general, the most common position is in Topic position (the default position
in an SOV default word order language). In both cases, it is least common in the
Focus position, and somewhat rare in the Completive position, but more common in
the Background position. The main difference between ergative and nominative forms
of the verb is that the ergative is somewhat more common in the Background position.
34. I do not include in this total 21 examples of cāini, although they might be related and both
likely stem from the verb cāhinu.

35. There were three examples which I call “VP-fronted” in which the verb itself is placed in the
first topic position and all the remaining material comes afterward. There were three examples,
all with ergative-marked subjects, and in the figure I consider the subject to be in Backgrounded
position in this case.

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These results accord with the intuitions of elicitation respondents. In particular BB
noted that the ergative form sounds much more natural than the ergative form as it
is postposed in the following examples from the NNSP sample:

(171) a. ani pheri ‘lagāu’ bhan-chau timi-le

and again ‘wear.imp’ say-pres.2.sg you-erg
‘And then once again ‘wear it!’ you’ll say.’ [V001001004; M7]

b. yo lā-nu par-yo bhane, tei lān-chu

this take-non.fin need-perf.3.sg cond, that.emph take-pres.1.sg
hai maile
prt I.erg
‘If I have to take this one, I’ll that one as well.’ [V001001004; M7]

c. mil-ā-era pani artha aa-ena ke, kasto

arrange-cause-conj also right come-perf.3.sg.neg what, how
kurā gar-cháu timi-le ?
thing do-pres.2.sg you-erg ?
‘Even after discounting it is not enough, what are you talking about?’
[V001001004; M7]

So St arguments in general tend to be in the Topic or Background position, which

both consist of old information but differ in terms of prominence. Ergative marked
objects, interestingly, are somewhat more prevalent in the Background position, which
goes against the general idea that the ergative is associated with greater prominence.

4.5.2 Categorical Propositions

The notion that ergative marking relates to a thetic/categorical distinction is based

upon observations that elicitation respondents have made about sentences like the
following:

(172) a. prakash/prakash-le curoṭ khān-cha

Prakash/Prakash-erg cigarette eat-cont-pres.3.sg
‘Prakash is smoking/smokes a cigarette.’ [PK]

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 b. shikāri/shikāri-le mrigā samāt-dai-cha
hunter/hunter-le deer catch-cont-pres.3.sg
‘A/the hunter is catching deer.’ [TD]

c. jogi/jogi-le siddha māg-dai-cha

holy.man/holy.man-erg alms beg-cont-pres.3.sg
‘A/the holy man is begging for alms.’ [BB]

d. tyo khaire/khaire-le foto

that white.person/white.person-erg photo
kic-dai-ho
photograph-cont-pres.3.sg
‘That tourist is taking a picture.’ [RM]

(172a) is ambiguous between a habitual, ongoing, and future-oriented reading, while

the rest are marked as continuous. The subject in (172a) is also necessarily definite,
being a proper name, and the subject in (172d) is definite because it is a determiner,
but the other two are ambiguous between definite or indefinite readings because Nepali
does not have obligatory determiners that carry presuppositions of definiteness as
English does. In each sentence both the nominative and ergative form of the subject
is grammatical.

A general intuition of elicitation respondents is that the clause with the ergative
form is more “about” the subject. The ergative marking provides an extra statement:
it makes clear that the action belongs particularly to the subject, that this entity in
particular is being picked out as the subject of the clause. The action might describe a
particular habit or addiction in (172a), or be an action that particularly characterizes
the subject, as in (172b).

These intuitions are the motivation behind considering Kuroda (1972)’s thetic/categorical
propositions as a distinction relevant to the expression of ergativity in Nepali. The
categorical proposition consists of the apprehension of the logical subject (the topic
of the sentence, i.e., what it is about) and then the predication of that subject. This
is contrasted with a thetic proposition, which is a statement about a state of affairs

224
with no particular entity of the clause being singled out as what the clause is about.

In the simple present tense as in (172a), it will tend to be associated with individual-
level predication, but does not require the predication to be individual-level. Habitual
and generic readings must be categorical propositions, but categorical propositions
can also be stage-level (Ladusaw 2000). For example, in response to a particular
question about the activities of a particular hunter, “The hunter is hunting deer right
now” is a categorical proposition. This means that Butt and Poudel (2007)’s obser-
vations about the ergative being associated with habitual readings can be extended
to other imperfective tenses by making it a general property of the proposition rather
than simply a property of the predicate.

In the terminology of topicality, we can consider a categorical proposition to con-

tain a particular entity that is the topic, whereas in a thetic proposition the entire
clause is the topic. Note that the topic (logical subject in Kuroda’s terms) can be
any element of the clause (noun phrases, prepositional phrases, etc.), although it is
typically the St of transitive clauses. The contrastive topic marker in Nepali, cāhĩ, is
a very clear example of a grammatical device that apprehends a particular element
of the clause as the topic. It also emphasizes a contrast between other possible topics
which can be a signal that the speaker is changing the subject by introducing a new
topic, similar to the “As for” construction in English.

The ergative marker, -le, on the other hand, may only attach to the St . It does
not, as we have seen, only mark contrastive topics. So the argument is not that the
ergative marker is a topic marker in Nepali, but rather that it correlates specifically
with categorical propositions in which the St is the topic.

4.5.3 QUD, Definiteness, and Aboutness

A categorical proposition is about a particular entity and a thetic proposition is about

a state of affairs. In both Nepali and English, a statement like “Prakash is smoking a

225
cigarette” could be either thetic or categorical depending upon whether it is construed
as a general statement about the world or a statement particularly about Prakash.
Only the categorical reading is possible with explicit topicalization: “As for Prakash,
he’s smoking a cigarette.” Under a question-based model of discourse structure as
in Roberts (1996), every felicitous statement provides an answer to an implicitly or
explicitly-stated question. The topic of a sentence in this sense is the Question Under
Discussion that is addressed by the statement. The QUD determines whether the
response is thetic or categorical:

(173) a. Thetic-Supporting Question: Why is it smoky in here?

Answer: Prakash is smoking a cigarette.

b. Categorical-Supporting Question: What is Prakash doing right now?

Answer: Prakash is smoking a cigarette.

Ladusaw (2000) argues that the subject of a categorical proposition must be strongly-
construed, and Kuroda (1972) notes that categorical propositions are associated with
definite determiners in English. Similarly, topics typically consist of old information
that is known in the context of the discourse.36 This means that while the St in the
clause of a thetic proposition may be definite or indefinite, the topic of a categorical
proposition generally must be definite. In the following sentences, imagine that there
is a particular hunter known to both speakers to have been walking around the woods
nearby.

(174) a. Thetic-Supporting Question: Why was there just a loud bang?

Answer: A hunter is outside hunting deer. / The hunter is outside hunting
deer.

b. Categorical-Supporting Question: What is the hunter doing on our prop-

erty?
36. While some languages contain topic markers that specifically introduce new discourse referents,
-le is more often associated with old information.

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 Answer: #A hunter is outside hunting deer. / The hunter is outside
hunting deer.

More generally, a question about a general state of affairs can be answered with a
categorical proposition, but a question about a particular entity cannot be answered
with a thetic statement:

(175) a. Thetic-Supporting Question: What is happening in this photograph?

Answer: A holy man is begging for alms. A tourist is taking a picture
of the market. / As to the holy man here, he’s begging for alms. That
tourist is taking a picture of the market.

b. Categorical-Supporting Question: In this photograph, what is the holy

man doing and what is the tourist doing?
Answer: #A holy man is begging for alms. A tourist is taking a picture
of the market. / As to the holy man here, he’s begging for alms. That
tourist is taking a picture of the market.

Therefore, if ergative marking is particularly associated with categorical propositions,

then we expect (1) that the ergative St must be definite, and (2) that the nominative
St cannot be the answer to a question about a specific entity (categorical-supporting).
Furthermore, the QUD is related to a given topic X in the following way: it is a
subquestion of the more general question “What about X?” So if the statement “The
hunter is outside hunting deer” is categorical, then it provides a partial answer to
the question “What about the hunter?” In general, we should find the ergative to be
preferred when the question is explicitly “What about X?”37

(176) ~ bhāshā sik-che

a. amritā ciniyā ani sonām ni ?
Amrita Chinese language learn-pres.3.sg.f and Sonam and ?
37. A fairly literal equivalent expression in Nepali would be ke ko bārema. In the Kathmandu
Survey I alternated this with a topic marker, but I understand this to be a mistake in the survey
design because both are fairly unnatural ways of asking the question as opposed to the ni discourse
particle.

227
 ‘Amrita studies Chinese. And what about Sonam?’ [BA]

b. sonam-(le) koriyan bhāshā sik-cha

Sonam-(erg) korean language learn-pres.3.sg
‘Sonam studies Korean.’ [BA]

Judgments from elicitation respondents suggest that there is a general tendency for
the ergative to be associated with categorical propositions, but it is not a one-to-one
correspondence. As with the individual-level predication theory, there is a reasonable
amount of variation in responses. The strongest inclination is for the ergative-marked
element to be presupposed in the discourse. Even if the question is thetic, the ergative
is only used when the subject is known to the speakers:

(177) a. bahira ke hun-dai-cha ?

outside what cop-cont-pres.3.sg ?
‘What is happening outside?’ [TD]

b. shikāri-le mrigā samāt-dai-cha

hunter-erg deer catch-
‘The hunter is hunting a deer.’ [TD]

Note however that we have already seen some examples in which the subject is in-
definite, so while this may be a tendency it is not a categorical one. In any case,
indefinite subjects can be topics in some circumstances.

(178) carā-le khān-cha

bird-erg eat-pres.3.sg
‘A bird will eat (it).’ [TD]

Respondents varied in whether or not they accepted the nominative form with an
explicitly categorical-supporting question. Some disliked it (PK, TD, RM), but others
found it acceptable. Judgments sometimes changed when I asked the same question
at a later date, which is a strong indication that the QUD is not the only factor
determining the expression of the ergative.

228
(179) a. Context: What is Prakash doing right now?

b. prakāsh/prakash-le curoṭ piun-dai-cha

prakash/prakash-erg cigarette drink-cont-pres.3.sg
‘Prakash is smoking a cigarette.’ [PK]

c. Context: Why does it stink in this room?

d. prakāsh curoṭ piun-dai-cha

prakash-erg cigarette drink-cont-pres.3.sg
‘Prakash is smoking a cigarette.’ [PK]

Section (I) of the Kathmandu Survey specifically contrasted a Thetic/Categorical

QUD with the same response in a four-way contrast. In section (E), each trial specif-
ically contained a “What about X?” question. In both cases, there survey results
did not show any particular pattern beyond the general trend for the ergative to be
preferred on all sentences. This may simply indicate that whether or not there is a
tendency for categorical propositions to be associated with the ergative form, both
forms are generally acceptable. The results are in Figure (4.37).

4.5.4 Ergative Marking and the (Implied) Question

A comment which frequently arose in discussions about the nature of the QUD was
that the ergative form in a response follows an ergative form in the question:

(180) ko/kas-le khānā pak-āun-dai-cha ?

who/who-erg food cook-caus-cont-pres.3.sg ?
‘Who is cooking food?’ [RM]

(181) priyā/priyā-le khānā pak-āun-dai-chu

Priya/.Priya-erg food cook-caus-cont-pres.1.sg
‘Priya is cooking food.’ [RM]

If the question is Ko? then the response is nominative, and if the question is
Kasle? then the response is ergative. I attempted to circumvent this issue in some
cases by having the question be about a particular entity but expressed in a copular

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 Figure 4.37: Ergative Marking Results for Categorical Propositions

clause. For example, for the categorical statement “The hunter is hunting deer?”
the question “Where is the hunter?” could be considered to set up a categorical
response (although TD noted that the sentence here is about a location rather than
a hunter). This effect may have biased the results of the survey. I tabulated, for
each transitive imperfective trial question, whether the St of the question was in

230
the nominative case, ergative case, or whether the question was a copular clause or
some other circumlocution. The results, given in Figure (4.38), indicate that the
ergative is still preferred in each case, but if the question uses the nominative case,
the nominative case is somewhat more acceptable.

Case Average Score Like (4 or 5) Dislike (1 or 2)

NA
ERG (n=630) 4.43 86.3% 8.4%
NOM (n=628) 3.39 55.3% 29.6%
Nominative
ERG (n=220) 4.45 87.7% 7.7%
NOM (n=221) 4.09 77.4% 9.5%
Ergative
ERG (n=250) 4.40 85.2% 8.4%
NOM (n=250) 3.60 58.0% 22.0%

Figure 4.38: Ergative Marking Results and Case on the Survey Question

However, the mere availability of a nominative question word Ko in a transitive

question is problematic for the theory that a categorical proposition must be marked
with the ergative. The implication is that there can be a question underlying the
statement Priya khānā pakāundaicha ‘Priya.nom is cooking food,’ which is Ko khānā
pakāundaicha? ‘Who.nom is cooking food?’ But this question is requesting infor-

231
mation about a particular entity and not a state of affairs. So the response must be
categorical. Therefore there cannot be a one-to-one correspondence between ergative
marking and categorical propositions.

4.5.5 Summary

The associations in this section all derive from the ergative having a greater promi-
nence in the discourse. The St position is typically the topic, and we find a correlation
between the ergative and prominent topics (we also find it associated with back-
grounded non-topical given information, which is a puzzle). Related to the notion
of characterizing predicates and predicate prominence, we find that ergative-marked
subjects are associated with categorical propositions. These associations do not re-
late to the subject as an effector of the event, but rather result from the direction
of attention to the subject itself. In chapter 6 I argue that this is inherent to an
optional case marking system, in which the speaker’s choice to use the case marker
will increase its discourse prominence.

4.6 Overall Summary of Feature Correlations

Figure (4.39) is a summary of the feature correlations discussed in this chapter. This
analysis broadly supports the major observations that have been made in the liter-
ature about Nepali, as well as most of the correlations we expect from literature on
OEM and transitivity. However, the only associations I take to be truly categorical
are (1) the restriction of ergative marking to transitive clauses; and (2) the associa-
tion between ergative and perfective verb forms. Every other association represents
a tendency of greater or lesser strength. These represent pragmatic inferences that
a listener might make about the usage of the ergative in a domain where it is not
categorically determined. Thus native speakers will differ in their judgments.

232
 All of these associations ultimately derive from two sources. The first involves
the meaning of the ergative marker on the St of a transitive event. A prototypical
transitive event is one in which the subject instigates, enacts, and completes an event
which has an effect on an object. This is the source of feature associations related
to a transitivity prototype and an St prototype. In general, the usage of the ergative
marker is associated with highly transitive events. However, unlike with Hindi, erga-
tive marking has no association with Agency or Volitionality. Furthermore, ergative
marking is associated with subjects that are unexpected or infrequently found in St
position. I will argue in chapter 6 this arises from general markedness principles.
Feature Correlation Categorical Source
Interpretation of the Event
Perfective verb forms Positive Yes Effector
Intransitive clauses Negative Yes Effector
Copular clauses Negative Yes Effector
Individual-level predicates Positive No Prominence
Characterizing predicates Positive No Prominence
Realis Mode Positive No Effector
Interpretation of the Subject
Animacy in Common Nouns Negative No Prominence/Effector
First Person Pronouns Negative No Prominence/Effector
Kind Readings Positive No Prominence
Strong Construal of Quantifiers Positive No Prominence
Agency None - -
Volitionality None - -
Interpretation of the Object
Elided Objects Positive No Prominence
Affectedness None - -
Individuation Positive No Effector
Discourse Associations
Focus None - -
Topic Positive No Prominence
Definiteness Positive No Prominence
Categorical Propositions Positive No Prominence

Figure 4.39: Overall Summary of Ergative Feature Correlations

Secondly, there are feature associations that do not seem to involve the effective-
ness of the event per se, but rather correlate with discourse prominence. The marked
St is associated with categorical propositions, and therefore definiteness, topicality,
kind readings of the subject, strong construals, and characterizing predicates. Dis-
course prominence is an inherent feature of any optional case marking system, and

233
we expect most if not all of these features to also be found in other OCM systems
like differential object marking.
In chapter 5 I discuss ergativity from a syntactic point of view before returning
to this markedness-based account in chapter 6.

234
Chapter 5

The Syntactic Profile of Nepali

Ergativity

Modern linguists first began to study ergativity as a unified phenomenon following

Dixon’s 1972 monograph on Dyirbal, and during most of that decade ergativity was
primarily studied through a functional-typological lens. During the following two
decades syntacticians of all theoretical persuasions began to take interest in ergative
languages (DeLancey 2004). For formal syntacticians in the generativist tradition,
ergative patterning provided a challenge to the traditional understanding of case
theory derived from Government and Binding Theory (Baker and Bobaljik 2017).
This has led to a substantial theoretical literature on the nature of ergativity as a
syntactic phenomenon.

In the Discussions chapter to follow this one, I analyze the ergative case marker
in terms of its semantic and pragmatic functions. I will argue that the -le marker
contributes the same semantic meaning as an ergative and as an instrumental case
marker. It marks the given argument as the effector of the event represented by the
clause.

This approach says little about the role that syntax plays in ergative patterning.

235
The purpose of this chapter is to profile the Nepali system among an overall typology
of ergative languages in order to demonstrate that Nepali ergativity is a morphological
phenomenon which has a minimal effect on structure.

In the first part of this chapter, I demonstrate that Nepali lacks ergative align-
ment in those grammatical domains where it would be expected in a syntactically
ergative language: as a syntactic pivot in subordinate clauses, as well as in adjectival
and verbal cross-referencing. Ergative patterning is thus restricted to the domain of
nominal case morphology.

In the second part of this chapter I discuss three theories of ergative case that
make differing predictions about ergative alignment: structural case, inherent case,
and dependent case. Ergativity is assigned by the syntax for structural case and
inherent case, and it is assigned by the morphology in dependent case. The ability of
ergative marking to appear in non-finite clauses and adherence to the Marantz case
generalization against derived ergatives indicates that Nepali ergativity is likely a
dependent case. Furthermore, Nepali does not fit neatly into the typology of ergative
patterning given by Legate (2008)’s inherent case analysis because ergative case is
found in relative clauses.

5.1 Morphological and Syntactic Ergativity

Ergative patterning in a language may be present at one level of structure and not
another. We have been considering ergative patterning at the morphological level,
particularly as manifested in the case morphology. Ergative morphology may or may
not correspond to ergative patterning at the syntactic level. The question, as articu-
lated by Anderson (1977), is whether ergativity in a given language is syntactically
“deep” or “shallow.” Anderson argues that ergativity is relatively superficial in most
languages. Anderson’s perspective is a historical one, in which ergative morphology

236
can be thought of as a fossilized relic of an earlier form of the language; a syntactic
construction (such as the passive) is reanalyzed and morphologically reappropriated
without any effect on the underlying syntax.

5.1.1 Subjecthood Diagnostics

In support of this notion is the observation that for many morphologically ergative
languages, syntactic diagnostics for subjecthood pattern along nominative-accusative
lines. In other words, a particular diagnostic will group together Si /St against O
(nominative-accusative) even though case-marking groups Si /O against St (ergative-
absolutive). The common subjecthood diagnostics are reflexivization, coordination,
and control (Keenan 1985). For all three of these diagnostics Nepali exhibits a
nominative-accusative syntactic pattern.

Reflexivization

Reflexive pronouns in Nepali (as in other Indo-Aryan languages) are coreferential

with the subject of the clause. The general form of the reflexive pronoun in Nepali is
āphu/āphai.

(182) a. mai āphui -lāi dekh-chu

I self-acc see-pres.1.sg
‘I see myself.’ [BB]

b. maii -le āphui -lāi dekh-ẽ

I.obl-erg self-acc see-perf.1.sg
‘I saw myself.’ [BB]

c. mai -lāi *āphui -le dekh-ẽ

I-acc *self-erg see-perf.1.sg
*‘Myself saw me.’ [BB]

For both examples (182a) and (182b), the reflexive pronoun must be coreferential
with the subject of the sentence. This is true whether the subject is unmarked, as

237
in the imperfective clause in (182a), or marked ergative, as in the perfective clause
in (182b). This represents a nominative-accusative alignment pattern in the syntax
which differs from the morphological expression of ergative marking in (182b).
With an ergative-absolutive syntactic alignment we would expect the pattern in
(182c) to be grammatical instead: a reflexive pronoun in a transitive perfective clause
would be coreferential with O.1
The genitive form of the reflexive pronoun is āphno, and it too must be corefer-
ential with the subject of the clause. This contrasts with the genitive form of regular
pronoun us-ko ‘his’, which may refer to another contextually relevant entity. In this
context, KS is presented with a situation in which Ram and Vijay are at a dinner
party.

(183) a. rāmi aphnoi mec-mā bas-yo

ram self.gen chair-loc sit-perf.3.sg
‘Ram sat in his (Ram’s) chair.’ [KS]

b. rāmi usi/j -ko mec-mā bas-yo

ram pro.obl-gen chair-loc sit-perf.3.sg
1. As a reflexive pronoun, then, āphu should never be able to take an ergative case. Because
the referent of aphu is human, it cannot be an instrumental either. Yet the corpus contains many
instances of āphu-le and āphai-le. This is due to an extension of the reflexive pronoun in which it is
referential with a contextually relevant discourse entity:

(1) a. ainā-mā kas-le lugā dekh-cha ?

mirror-loc who.obl-erg clothes see-pres.3.sg ?
‘Who sees clothes in the mirror?’ [BB]
b. aphāi-le lugā dekh-chu
refl.emph-erg clothes see-pres.1.sg
‘I (myself) see clothes (in the mirror).’ [BB]

This raises the question of whether some version of (182c) could be grammatical under this
extended interpretation of the reflexive. BB speaker finds this sentence to be potentially grammatical
but somewhat stilted:

(2) aphāi-le ma-lāi ainā-mā dekh-chu

refl.emph-erg I-acc mirror-loc see-pres.1.sg
‘I (myself) see me in the mirror.’ [BB]

In any case, this extended usage of the reflexive pronoun is not germane to the point at hand,
because it does not have to be coreferential with the subject of the clause.

238
 ‘Ram sat in his (Ram’s/Vijay’s) chair.’ [KS]

In a transitive clause, āphno must be coreferential with the St , indicative of an ac-

cusative pattern, rather than the O, which would be indicative of an ergative syntactic
alignment.

(184) a. vijāyi -le rāmj -lāi aphnoi mec-mā bas-ā-yo

vijay-erg ram-acc self.gen chair-loc sit-caus-perf.3.sg
‘Vijay seated Ram in his (Vijay’s) chair.’ [KS]

Coordination

As noted by Wallace (1982), Nepali allows a subject coordination in multi-clausal

sentences even when there is an ergative-nominative clash:

(185) [ āja ekdam kabāḍi pu lagā-era ] ∅ ā-eko chu ke

[ today very trashy prt wear-conj ] ∅ come-pres.perf.1.sg what
maile
I.erg
‘Today I came here wearing trashy (clothes).’ [V001001001; M3]

(186) tapāĩ-le [ ∅ tyo jasto “jangal wāk” jā~-daakheri ] bāgh

you.hon-erg [ ∅ that how “Jungle Walk” go-while ] tiger
dekh-nu bhaeko cha ki chaina ?
see-pres.perf.hon.3.sg or cop.pres.3.sg.neg ?
‘Going on a jungle walk, have you ever seen a tiger?’ [V001002005; M7]

In the first example, the subject of both clauses is the speaker. The outer clause is
perfective but unaccusative intransitive, requiring a nominative, and the inner clause
is perfective and transitive, allowing an ergative. The (postposed) overt subject
is ergative, and it controls both clauses. In the second example, the outer clause
is perfective and transitive, requiring an ergative subject, while the inner clause is
unaccusative, requiring a nominative subject. The ergative subject controls both
clauses.

239
 Genetti (1988) is a study of the similar phenomenon of multiple clause chains in
the Tibeto-Burman language Newari. She concludes that topicality plays the decisive
role in determining the case of the subject in multiple clause chains. This may be the
true for Nepali as well. Regardless, the referentiality between Si and St in multiple
clauses, whether they carry absolutive or ergative morphological case, is indicative of
a nominative-accusative syntactic pattern.

Control

Another subject diagnostic is that of subject coreference with control. In a matrix

clause that takes a subordinate clause as a complement of the VP, the subject is
coreferential with the syntactic subject of the subordinate clause.

(187) [keṭā-le]i {øi kukur-lāi hirk-āu-na } khoj-yo

boyi -erg {øi dog-obj hit-caus-inf } seek-perf.3.sg
‘The boy tried to beat the dog.’

The NP keṭā “boy” is coreferential with the deleted St of the subordinate clause rather
than the O of the subordinate clause.2 It is ungrammatical for the syntactic subject
to be coreferential with the O of the subordinate clause:

(188) *[kukur-le]i {øi keṭā-le hirk-āu-na } khoj-yo

*dogi -erg {øi boy-erg hit-caus-inf } seek-perf.3.sg
*‘The dog tried to get the boy to beat him.’

For all three of these subject diagnostics Nepali picks out St and Si as the subject
regardless of morphological case marking, suggesting that ergativity in Nepali is rel-
atively superficial. Anderson (1977) [and possibly also Butt 2017] notes that this is
true for Hindi, and it may be considered a general feature of Indo-Aryan.
2. This particular example is based off of Li (2007) (footnote 5). I changed the matrix verb from
Li’s “The boy wanted to beat the dog” because the Nepali verb cahānu is often used in an impersonal
form cahinu which takes a dative subject, and the given example was easier to elicit.

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Syntactic ergativity in Dyirbal

In contrast to Nepali, there are some languages that do show a deeper ergative pat-
terning. The most famous of these is the Pama-Nyungan language Dyirbal. The
following example demonstrates syntactic ergativity in subject coordination for this
language:

(189) a. ŋuma banaga-ny u

father.abs return-nonfut
‘Father returned.’(Dixon 1994: 10)

b. ŋuma yabu-ŋgu bura-n

father.abs mother-erg see-nonfut
‘Mother saw Father.’(Dixon 1994: 10)

c. ŋuma banaga-ny u yabu-ŋgu bura-n

father.abs return-nonfut mother-erg see-nonfut
‘Father returned and Mother saw (him).’(Dixon 1994: 12)

From (189a) and (189b) we can see that Dyirbal has an ergative morphological struc-
ture: Si in (189a) and O in (189b) are absolutive, in opposition to the ergative-marked
St of (189b). In (189c) there is coordination between the two clauses “Father returned”
and “Mother saw him”, but here it is the O of the transitive second clause that is
deleted because it is coreferential with the Si of the first clause. The syntactic or-
ganization of the clause is ergative-absolutive, providing a contrast with the Nepali
example of coordination.3

In sum, we have found one point of variation in languages with ergative morphol-
ogy. Languages like Nepali have a straightforward nominative-accusative syntactic
organization, while languages like Dyirbal show ergative patterning of subjects in at
least some syntactic constructions.

3. Van de Visser (2003: 179) notes, however, that Dyirbal does not have reflexive pronouns that
pattern ergatively, and that there do not appear to be any languages which do.

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5.1.2 Agreement

Recall that Nepali has a completely nominative-accusative verbal agreement pattern.

The Nepali verb agrees uniformly with St and Si regardless of whether St is case-
marked ergative or nominative. In this respect Nepali differs from nearly every other
Indo-Aryan language with ergative case-marking morphology, which exhibit some
form of O agreement (Deo and Sharma 2006).
Regardless of whether verbal agreement represents an underlying syntactic orga-
nization or it is considered to be an entirely morphological phenomenon, the absence
of ergative-absolutive verbal agreement in Nepali is evidence that ergativity is con-
strained to a relatively small part of the grammar of the language.

5.1.3 Lack of Covert Ergative Case in Adjectives

Deo and Sharma (2006) present evidence for ergative patterning in adjectives even
when it is not overt on nouns, which can be considered evidence that ergativity has
a deeper structural component. However, this is not the case for Nepali. In 3.2.5 we
discussed the lack of ergative morphology in Marathi local pronouns. The first person
singular mī has only the nominative form, but in the perfective agreement is with O.
This indicates that the subject is underlyingly ergative:

(190) mī ek āmbā khā-llā

I.erg one mango.nom eat-perf.3.sg
‘I ate a mango.’ (Deo and Sharma 2006: 14)

Further evidence that the subject is covertly ergative comes from adjectival agree-
ment. Adjectives show oblique inflection when they modify an ergative subject and
nominative inflection when they modify a nominative subject:

(191) a. vedyā ashā mī ek āmbā khā-lā

foolish.obl like.obl I.erg one mango.nom eat-perf.3.sg
‘Foolish me ate a mango.’ (Deo and Sharma 2006: 14)

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 b. vedī ashī mī ek āmbā khā-te
foolish.nom like.like I.nom one mango eat-pres.1.sg
‘Foolish me eats a mango.’ (Deo and Sharma 2006: 14)

(191a) is a perfective clause so the subject is ergative. The adjectives modifying mī

are in the oblique case. (191b) is an imperfective clause so the expected pattern
is nominative. The adjectives modifying mī are in the nominative case. Thus for
Marathi there is evidence of ergative alignment even when it is not visible in the
morphology.
Nepali does not have O agreement like Marathi, but there is adjectival agreement
and a similar oblique inflection. Historically, nouns like keṭo ‘boy’ would inflect with
an oblique case in the plural or when case-marked by ergative (keṭā-le), accusative
(keṭā-lāi), or genitive (keṭā-ko). Today this distinction is lost in almost all cases.
Even at the turn of the 20th century Grierson observed that “the oblique and direct
forms are used interchangeably”(Grierson 1904a: 23). BB used keṭā generally but
noted that keṭo specifies a young boy.

(192) a. sāno keṭā bahirā cha

small boy-pl outside cop.3.sg
‘The very small boy is outside.’ [BB]

b. sānā keṭā-haru bahirā chan

small.obl boy-pl outside cop.3.pl
‘The small boys are outside.’ [BB]

The adjective sāno modifies the subject, and when the subject is plural, as in the
second example, it takes an oblique inflection. Accusative case-marked objects also
trigger oblique inflection:

(193) mai-le sānā kheṭā-lāi dekh-ẽ

I.obl-erg small.obl boy-acc see-perf.1.sg
‘I saw a small boy.’ [BB]

However, ergative-marked subjects do not trigger oblique inflection:

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(194) euṭā sāno keṭhā-le ā~ap khāyo
one small boy.obl-erg mango eat-perf.3.sg
‘The small boy ate a mango.’ [BB]

So ergative case is treated identically to nominative case for the sake of adjectival
agreement, and there does not appear to be evidence for covert ergative case.

5.2 Theories of Syntactic Ergativity

Within the tradition of generative syntax, there are three basic ideas about how
ergative case is assigned. Ergative case marking may be considered a structural
case, an inherent case, or a dependent case. The first two theories presume the
existence of a separate abstract case which is assigned in the syntax and is realized
(perhaps imperfectly) by the available morphological structure. For dependent case
theories, ergativity is entirely morphological in nature.

5.2.1 Structural Case, Inherent Case, and Dependent Case

Bobaljik (1993) and Laka (1993) are structural analyses of ergative case. Structural
case is assigned based on the position of the argument within the syntactic structure
of a clause. Most structural case theories of ergative-marking argue that ergative case
is assigned by the Tense head in the same way that nominative case is assigned in a
nominative-accusative language. This is an illustration of “Rijan reads a book” in a
hypothetical nominative-accusative language.

(195) Structural Case Assignment in a nominative-accusative

244
 TP

T T’

T0 vP

rijan v’
nom
v0 VP

read book
acc

The external argument “Rijan” receives nominative case from T0 (perhaps after it
moves to subject position at T), and the internal argument “book” receives structural
accusative case from v0 . The assignment of nominative case is structural because it
is assigned by a clause head rather than a head in the verb phrase. Similarly, a
structural theory of ergative case may posit that ergative case is assigned by T0 . The
internal argument is assigned absolutive case by v0 .4

(196) Structural Case Assignment in an ergative-absolutive language

TP

T T’

T0 vP

rijan v’
erg
v0 VP

read book
abs

Inherent case analyses of ergativity include Woolford (1997), Laka (2006), Legate
(2008), and Legate (2012). Inherent case is assigned locally to an argument in its base
generated position (an argument cannot move up to a position to get inherent case).
4. Variations on this viewpoint include accusative case assignment by v0 in languages with ergative-
absolutive-accusative, with absolutive unmarked, or ergative case assignment by v0 .

245
This position may be associated with a particular thematic role, such as an agent
thematic role being generated in the specifier of vP.
In different theories and manifestations, the internal argument may be assigned
nominative/absolutive case by T0 or v0 , or else it may be a default unmarked case.
Crucially, ergative case is assigned by v0 to its specifier, where the external argument
of a transitive clause originates.

(197) Inherent Case Assignment in an ergative language

TP

T T’

T0 vP

rijan v’

v0 VP
erg
read book
nom

Finally, Marantz (1991) argues that accusative and ergative case both constitute
Dependent cases. This theory is further developed in Coon (2013), Baker (2015),
and Baker and Bobaljik (2017). Dependent case is assigned to one of the arguments in
a VP on the condition that another argument is present in the same clause. Therefore,
ergative and accusative case may only be assigned in transitive clauses. If case is
assigned to the lower argument of the VP then it is accusative case; if case is assigned
to the higher argument then it is ergative case.
Dependent case is entirely morphological, so there is no abstract syntactic case
assignment. Dependent case will be assigned separately from overall syntactic struc-
ture after the assignment of lexical cases (cases that are assigned idiosyncratically by
particular verbs).

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5.2.2 Structural versus Inherent Case

The distinction between structural and inherent case is a feature of the Principle-
and-Parameters syntax model, and the distinction has carried over into subsequent
models including the Minimalist Program (Laka 2006). It arises from the observation
that case and semantic function (semantic role) are not equivalent, and in many
languages it is necessary to distinguish between (a) structural case that is assigned
to an argument by virtue of it being in a particular syntactic position, (b) case that
is always associated with a particular thematic role, and (c) case that is assigned
idiosyncratically by the verb. These latter two are examples of inherent case. We
can see examples of (b) and (c) in Nepali: the postposition -mā always marks an
argument with a locative theta role regardless of its position in the clause, and in
experiencer constructions with the verb lāgnu the subject must be marked with the
accusative -lāi:

(198) sikka buĩ-mā khas-yo

coin floor-loc fall-perf.3.sg
‘The coin fell on the ground.’ [TD]

(199) bhok-le us-lāi rĩŋaṭā lāg-yo

hunger-instr pro.obl-acc dizzy feel-perf.3.sg
‘He feels dizzy from hunger.’ (Schmidt 1993: 680)

If ergative case is structural, then it should be possible to disassociate ergative case

from its semantic role. Laka (2006) compares ergativity in Burushaski with ergativity
in Basque, and argues that ergative case is structural in Burushaski but inherent in
Basque. For Burushaski, an agent is marked in ergative case in a transitive clause
but absolutive in an intransitive (unergative) clause:

(200) a. ne hír-e phaló bók-i

the.m man-erg seed.pl.abs sow-3.sg.m
‘The man planted the seeds.’ (Laka 2006: 375)

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 b. ne hir yált-i
the.m man.abs yawn-pret.3.sg.m
‘The man yawned.’ (Laka 2006: 375)

In Basque, by contrast, an agent will always be marked ergative, and the equivalent
sentence requires a light verb to make the sentence transitive. This is evidence for
Laka that Basque ergativity is inherent rather than structural.

(201) gizon-a-k aharrausi egi-n du

man-det-erg yawn do-perf has
‘The man yawned.’ (Laka 2006: 377)

For Nepali intransitive clauses, Li (2007)’s argument is that for unergative intransitive
clauses there is a distinction based on the lexical semantics of verb, in which ergative
marking is disallowed with telic agentive verbs and optional with atelic agentive verbs:

(202) a. rajnitigya lumbini jā-nu bhayo

politician.abs lumbini go-perf.hon.3.sg
‘The politician went to Lumbini.’ [ST]

b. sahuji-(le) jahile.pani khok-nu huncha

shopkeeper-(erg) always cough-inf hon.pres.3.sg
‘The shopkeeper is always coughing.’ [ST]

This would suggest that ergative case is structural. However, in 4.1.2 I argued that
clauses like (202a) are unaccusative in Nepali. If I am correct, then this does not
constitute evidence either way.
In any case, Legate (2012: 182) criticizes the general argument that ergativity
must be structural simply because transitive and intransitives behave differently. For
example, a transitivity restriction may also be found on datives for some languages
in which dative case is straightforwardly inherent.5
Another feature of structural case is that an argument may be assigned different
cases depending upon the larger syntactic structure of the clause (Baker and Bobaljik
5. However, imposing a transitivity restriction on Nepali would be somewhat more complicated
because marking is optional rather than obligatory.

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2017: 3). A particular argument may alternate case within the larger syntactic
structure. This contrasts with inherent case, for which case is assigned only to an
argument in its original position, and so there will not be case alternations in different
syntactic environments.
As a general rule, Nepali ergative case is unaffected by the syntactic environment.
This suggests that ergative case in Nepali is not structural.

Nonfinite Clauses

Accusative, nominative and ergative case marking is available to arguments in nonfi-

nite clauses. The fact that ergative marking is possible in nonfinite clauses suggests
that ergativity cannot be structural. Structural ergativity is assigned by the T head
which would be absent in nonfinite clauses.

(203) [anu-le aushadi na-kinn-unjel] sut-dina

[anu-erg medicine neg-buy-until] sleep-pres.3.sg.neg
‘Until Anu buys medicine she will not sleep.’

In general, the ergative marker is not affected by the nature of the clause. In
purposive clauses like the following, there is obligatory subject control, and there can
be an ergative-nominative mismatch:

(204) a. [anu sutna]-lāi ghar gā-yi

[anu sleep]-acc house go-perf.3.sg.f
‘Anu went home in order to sleep.’

b. anui -le [øi sutna]-lāi aushadi kinn-in

anui -erg [øi sleep]-acc medicine buy-perf.3.sg.f
‘Anu bought medicine in order to sleep.’

The same is true for nominalized clauses:

(205) a. hijo ā-eki keṭi-le kitāb lekh-eki

yesterday come-perf.3.sg.f girl-erg book write-perf.3.sg.f
che
cop.3.sg.f

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 ‘The girl who arrived yesterday wrote a book.

b. hijo nāc-eki keṭi-le kitāb lekh-eki

yesterday dance-perf.3.sg.f girl-erg book write-perf.3.sg.f
che
cop.3.sg.f
‘The girl who danced yesterday wrote a book.

5.2.3 Marantz’ Ergative Case Generalization

In proposing a dependent case analysis for the ergative, Marantz (1991) makes a
strong prediction about the inability of internal arguments to obtain ergative case:

Ergative case generalization: Even when ergative case may go on the

subject of an intransitive clause, ergative case will not appear on a derived
subject. (Marantz 1991: 13)

An example of a derived subject is the argument of an unaccusative intransitive. The

argument of an unaccusative, which is typically a theme, is presumed to originate as
the internal argument of a VP and move up to subject position (Perlmutter 1978).
The following example depicts the derivation of makkan pagl-iyo “The butter melted”:

(206) Possible derivation of an unaccusative intransitive

TP

T T’

T0 vP

v’

v0 VP

melt butter

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Marantz’ generalization predicts that even languages which allow ergative marking
on unergatives will disallow it on unaccusatives and any other derived subject. This
makes sense in a dependent case analysis, because ergative case is assigned to the
higher of two arguments in base position, and the theme argument is internal. For
languages which allow ergative marking on unergative accusatives, a dependent case
analysis may argue that there is in fact a covert internal argument. But an unac-
cusative should not be able to get ergative case.

The Marantz ergative case generalization is a natural consequence of an inher-

ent case analysis as well. Ergative case should be unavailable to derived subjects
because they do not originate in the external argument position. The ergative case
generalization is not a natural consequence of a structural case analysis of ergative
marking.

As discussed in 4.1.2, ergative case is never possible on unaccusative intransitive

verbs. This provides a nice substantiation of the ergative case generalization for
Nepali:

(207) das mineṭ pacchi ciyā pāk-cha

ten minute after tea.abs cook-pres.3.sg
‘The tea will cook in ten minutes.’ [BA]

(208) jahāj ādi-mā dub-iyo

ship.abs storm-loc sink-perf.3.sg
‘The ship sank in the storm.’ [BA]

(209) ghām-mā makkan pagl-iyo

sun-loc butter.abs melt-perf.3.sg
‘The butter melted in the sun.’ [ST]

Another example of a derived subject is a passive construction, in which the object

moves to subject position. In Nepali, the demoted subject may be marked by the
postposition -dvāra, (or, according to Verma (1976) the ablative -bāṭa) although for
most of my respondents this usage sounded artificial and overly academic, and there

251
were no corpus examples of case-marked demoted subjects. For the subject of a
passive construction, ergative case is not possible, as predicted by the ergative case
generalization:

(210) khānā pāk-ā-i-dai-cha

food cook-caus-pass-cont-pres.3.sg
‘The food is being cooked.’ [BB]

(211) mrigā-(lāi) mār-i-yo

deer-(acc) kill-pass-perf.3.sg
‘The deer was killed.’ [BB]

(212) sitā-lāi kitāb di-i-yo

sita-dat book give-pass-perf.3.sg
‘A book was given to Sita.’ [BB]

For an inherent case analysis, ergative case is assigned by the head where the NP
gets its thematic role. For a dependent case analysis, the relevant factor is whether
there are multiple NPs in the same domain (Baker and Bobaljik 2017: 5). In both
theories, a critical test of the ergative case generalization comes from constructions
with multiple internal arguments, such as the passive of a double object construction
or the applicative of an unaccusative verb (Legate 2012: 182).
The common difficulty with passive double object constructions, as noted by
Legate, is that for many languages, including Nepali, the indirect object is obliga-
torily marked dative. This may or may not satisfy a transitivity restriction. In the
examples below, -lāi is optional on the object of a bivalent verb but obligatory on the
indirect object of a double object verb:

(213) rām-le kitāb-(lāi) paḍh-yo

ram-erg book-(acc) read-perf.3.sg
‘Ram read a book.’ [BB]

(214) rām-le sitā-lāi kitāb di-yo

ram-erg sita-dative book give-perf.3.sg
‘Ram gave Sita a book.’ [BB]

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So (212) does not allow an ergative on “book” either because of the ergative case
generalization or because it does not satisfy a transitivity restriction. Furthermore,
Nepali does not appear to have the sort of applicatives that would be useful for testing
the hypothesis.

As discussed in 4.1.2, there are some verbs in Nepali that could arguably be
considered unaccusative transitives, i.e., verbs with two internal arguments. For these
verbs, we do find ergative marking on the subject:

(215) a. gaiḍā-haru-le hāti-lāi gher-e

rhino-pl-erg elephant-acc surround-perf.3.pl
‘The rhinos surrounded the elephant.’

b. jangal-le upatyakā-lāi gher-yo

forest-erg valley-acc surround-perf.3.sg
‘The forest covered the whole valley.’

c. kamilā-haru-le khānā-lāi ḍhāk-e

ant-pl-erg food-acc cover-perf.3.pl
‘The ants covered the food.’

It may be the case that the subjects of (215a) and (215c) are agents rather than
themes, but this is less plausible for (215b). If true, this would potentially be evidence
to support a dependent case analysis, because ergative marking is indeed possible in
the presence of another argument, regardless of semantic role.

5.2.4 Legate’s Typology of Ergative Case

Legate (2008)’s inherent case analysis of ergativity accounts for some of the differ-
ences between ergative languages by appealing to the morphological interpretation of
inherent case.

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 TP

T T’

T0 vP

EA v’

v0 VP
erg
verb IA
nom acc?

Nominative case is assigned structurally by T to the highest available argument.

Ergative case is assigned by the v head to the external argument (EA) in base position.
So the external argument of an unergative intransitive will get ergative case if there
is no transitivity restriction, otherwise they will get nominative case. The internal
argument of an unaccusative will get nominative case.

In Legate’s typology there are two kinds of ergative languages, ABS = NOM
languages and ABS = DEF (also called ABS = NOM & ACC) languages. Absolutive
is not a separate case. Rather, the morphological manifestation of inherent case leads
to the appearance of an ergative-absolutive pattern. The only difference between the
two types of languages is that for ABS = NOM languages the v head assigns structural
accusative case to the internal argument (IA), and for ABS = DEF languages it does
not (hence the question mark in the diagram).

For ABS = NOM languages, absolutive case is just nominative case assigned by
the T head, which searches down and assigns nominative case to the internal argument
(IA). Because the v head does not assign accusative case, the internal argument is
available to get nominative case.

For ABS = DEF languages, the v head always assigns accusative case to the
internal argument. However, there is no morphological expression of accusative case,

254
and the IA is left unmarked. Thus the nominative Si and the (accusative) O are both
unmarked.
Legate compares the ergative patterning of Warlpiri, Nieuean, Enga, and Hindi
with Georgian, categorizing the first four as ABS = DEF and the last as ABS = NOM.
She also categorizes languages with ergative splits according to nominal hierarchy as
ABS = DEF, and insofar as Nepali counts as a language of that type we can a priori
consider Nepali to be of that type. Legate develops five diagnostics for distinguishing
ABS = DEF and ABS = NOM, which are summarized by Legate (Legate 2012: 181):

1. ABS = DEF: lacks NOM and ACC morphology

ABS = NOM: may have independent ACC morphology

2. ABS = DEF: caseless DPs bear ABS

ABS = NOM: (no prediction)

3. ABS = DEF: if nonfinite allow for only a subset of cases, ABS is unavailable
for S but available for O
ABS = NOM: if nonfinite allow for only a subset of cases, ABS is unavailable
for both S and O

4. ABS = DEF: multiple absolutives are possible (e.g. indirect/applicative/adpositional

objects)
ABS = NOM: absolutive is unique

5. ABS = DEF: A/S agreement, or S agreement

ABS = NOM: S/O agreement

I will examine the behavior of Nepali for each of these diagnostics.

Lack of Accusative Morphology

Legate’s ABS = DEF requires that nominative and accusative case marking have
the morphological (unmarked) form. Therefore, such a language will not have overt

255
accusative case marking. This appears to be the case for Nieuean, Enga, and Warlpiri.
Hindi has a system of marking direct and indirect objects that is similar to Nepali,
which Legate considers to be dative marking. In fact, both Hindi and Nepali require
this case marker on indirect objects, but it is variable on direct objects.

Assume the Nepali case marker -lāi is not a marker of accusative structural case,
but rather an inherent dative case marker. Accusative case is then morphologically
unmarked in Nepali. So this diagnostic indicates that Nepali, like Hindi, could be
ABS = DEF.

Caseless DPs

If absolutive is the morphological default, then it should be found in constructions

in which no abstract case features are assigned to a DP. Legate gives the example of
hanging-topic left-dislocation, which is found in Hindi and Nepali. The hanging topic
is not given any abstract case marking:

(216) tyo keṭi, tes-le timi-lāi dekh-i ?

that girl.abs, 3.obl.low-erg you-acc see-perf.3.f.sg ?
‘That girl, did she see you?’ [BB]

It is not possible for there to be ergative case marking on “that girl,” which suggests
that the absolutive form is the default. The absolutive form is also the only form
available when the hanging topic is coreferential with an accusative-marked O, as in
(217a), or an Si , as in (217b).

(217) a. tyo keṭi, tai-le dekh-is us-lāi?

that girl.abs, 2.pro.obl.low-erg see-perf.2.sg.low pro.obl-acc?
‘That girl, did you see her?’ [BB]

b. tyo keṭi, u āja ākh-i ho ?

that girl.abs, 3.pro today come-perf.3.f.sg cop ?
‘That girl, did she arrive today?’ [BB]

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This again follows the prediction for ABS = DEF languages, although ABS = NOM
languages make no prediction on this either way.

Cases in Nonfinite Contexts

For ABS = DEF languages, Si and O have a different Abstract Case, even though
the morphological expression of that case is the same. Si is nominative, and O is
accusative. This makes a prediction for nonfinite contexts: absolutive on S should
be unavailable because there is no finite T head, but absolutive on O should remain
unavailable. Legate demonstrates that this is indeed the case for Hindi nominalized
clauses, in which absolutive on S becomes unavailable:

(218) a. [rām-ke baiṭhne]-par mãã-ne us-ko khānā di-yaa

[Ram-gen sit.nonfin]-loc mother-erg him-dat food give-perf
‘When Ram sat down, Mother gave him food.’ (Legate 2008: 65)

b. ilā-ne [rām-ke darvāzā kholne]-par anu-ko ḍããṭĀ

ila-erg [Ram-gen door.abs open.nonfin]-loc anu-dat scold.perf
‘Ila scolded Anu on Ram’s opening the door.’ (Legate 2008: 65)

In (218a) the subject of the nonfinite nominalized clause is “Ram”, but it cannot get
nominative case because there is no T head, so it is marked genitive. In (218b) the
object “door” can get accusative case, so it is marked absolutive.

For ABS = NOM languages, Legate predicts that neither O nor S should be
available in nonfinite contexts, and this is true in Georgian, for which the genitive is
required in both contexts.

Nepali, unlike either of these patterns, shows no restrictions for Si or O in nomi-

nalized nonfinite clauses:

(219) a. [ timi-lāi dekh-eko keṭhi ] bahirā che

[ you-acc see-perf girl ] outside cop.3.sg.f
‘The girl who saw you is outside.’ [BB]

257
 b. [ timi-le dekh-eko keṭhi ] bahirā che
[ you-erg see-perf girl ] outside cop.3.sg.f
‘The girl who you saw is outside.’ [BB]

c. [ timi-lāi dekh-eko keṭhi ] kitāb lekh-i

[ you-acc see-perf girl ] book write-perf.3.sg.low.f
‘The girl who saw you wrote a book.’ [BB]

d. [ timi-le dekh-eko keṭhi ] kitāb lekh-i

[ you-erg see-perf girl ] book write-perf.3.sg.low.f
‘The girl who you saw wrote a book.’ [BB]

So this diagnostic does not appear to be relevant for Nepali. I was unable to find any
other type of nonfinite clause in which there are restrictions on case.

Multiple Absolutives

Because the realization of Si and O as absolutive is the same, for ABS = DEF lan-
guages it is possible to have multiple absolutive arguments in the same clause. The
facts for Hindi and Nepali are quite similar here. In a verb with imperfective aspect,
it is quite possible for a clause to have multiple absolutives. In other words, there
is differential ergative marking on the subject and differential object marking on the
object, and these are somewhat independent of each other:

(220) rām harek din euṭā ãap khaan-cha

ram every day single mango eat-pres.3.sg
‘Ram eats a mango every day.’ [BB]

This contrasts with Georgian, in which accusative marking and ergative marking
are in complementary distribution such that clauses with two absolutives are not
possible:

(221) a. glex-i tesavs simind-s

peasant-nom he.sows.it corn-dat
‘The peasant is sowing the corn.’(Legate 2008: 65)

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 b. glex-ma datesa simind-i
peasant-erg he.sowed.it corn-nom
‘The peasant sowed corn.’(Legate 2008: 65)

Agreement

Finally, Legate distinguishes between agreement patterns for ABS = DEF languages
and ABS = NOM languages. Some ABS = DEF languages allow agreement with
the (ergative-marked) St , and some do not. But they should not normally allow
agreement with O. Thus the prediction is that for ABS = DEF languages agreement
should be with Si and O or just Si . For ABS = NOM languages the O is assigned
nominative case so there should be agreement with Si and O.
Hindi does in fact have O agreement when St is ergative and O is unmarked.
Legate explains this as “aggressive agreement,” such that T looks for something to
agree with when nothing else is available. However, this argument is less tenable in
other Indo-Aryan languages which presumably show ABS = DEF characteristics. In
Gujarati, for example, there is O agreement even when O is case-marked (Deo and
Sharma 2006: 73). In any case Nepali, with its straightforward St / Si agreement,
falls into the expected ABS = DEF category.

5.2.5 Conclusions

Ergative patterning in Indo-Aryan languages does not as a rule exhibit the deep
syntactic ergativity found in Dyirbal. However, even compared to related languages
ergative case-marking in Nepali has a minimal impact on the syntax. Hindi and
Marathi exhibit ergative patterning in verbal agreement, adjectival cross-reference,
and a sensitivity to case marking in subordinate and relative clauses. None of this is
found in Nepali.
A complete syntactic analysis of Nepali would likely need to consider ergativity
as a dependent case, such that ergativity is assigned in the presence of an object.

259
Adherence to the Marantz Case Generalization indicates that it is not structural, nor
does it neatly fit into Legate’s inherent case analysis. The dependent case analysis
is fairly straightforward if we follow the conclusion from 4.1.2 that ergative case is
restricted to transitive clauses. The analysis is a little trickier if we accept that
ergative marking is possible with unergative intransitives, because it would have to
explain why ergativity is variable in both perfective and imperfective clauses with
unergative intransitives.
The main visible trace of ergativity in the syntax is a strong adherence to the
Marantz Ergative Case Generalization, which could be framed in terms of the seman-
tic roles of the case-marked subject. Ergativity in Nepali is largely morphological and
has relatively little impact on the underlying syntactic organization.

260
Chapter 6

Discussions

三十輻共一轂，當其無，有車之用。

Thirty spokes converge on a hub

but it’s the emptiness

that makes a wheel work

Dàodé Jīng Chapter 11

(translation by Pine 2009)

In this chapter, I discuss a prototype analysis of the -le marker as the Effector
of an event, and argue that all of the feature associations discussed in chapter 4
arise either from this meaning or from general markedness principles that increase
the discourse salience of the marked form in opposition to its absence.
In section 6.1 I present the Effector analysis and illustrate how it unifies many of
the feature correlations we’ve seen. In 6.2, I discuss the relationship between seman-
tic markedness and variability in optional marking systems. I argue that markedness
represents a cline of opposition from inclusive asymmetry to polar opposition, and
this cline is associated with the strength of pragmatic implicatures. At the far end of

261
this cline an opposition is grammaticalized as a semantic entailment, which I demon-
strate with optional gender marking in English. I then apply this notion to the Nepali
ergative marker to derive the associations we find between ergativity and semantic
properties of the subject. In 6.3 I discuss discourse prominence and its relation to
categorical propositions and characterizing predicates. In 6.4 I discuss the grammat-
icalization of obligatory associations related to ergative marking and event structure.

6.1 A Prototype Analysis of the Nepali Ergative

All of the feature correlations we have seen arise from the pragmatic usage of the erga-
tive marker in grammatical domains where it varies with the unmarked nominative
form. Most of the feature correlations are predicted by the Transitivity Hypothesis,
for which ergativity is associated with higher transitivity. The prediction is that some
of these features of transitivity may be present whenever a language has an ergative
alignment pattern in case marking, although the hypothesis does not predict which
particular correlations will be present in any given language.

Crucially, the particular feature correlations come about through the meaning of
the morphological form itself. The ergative postposition -le is homophonous with the
instrumental postposition. If we consider the semantic contribution of -le to be the
same whether it marks a core argument (as an ergative) or an oblique argument (as
an instrumental), then we can explain many of these puzzling feature correlations.
This will be the focus of the current chapter, in which I will argue that the best
characterization of this meaning is that -le marks an Effector of the event described
by the clause.

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6.1.1 Peripheral Usages of -le

First, let us review the various usages of -le outside of the main subject marking
paradigm. As an instrumental marker, -le marks oblique arguments.

(222) a. maile camcā-le bhāt khā-ẽ

I.erg spoon-instr rice eat-perf.1.sg
‘I ate rice with a spoon.’ [TD]

b. dudh-le keṭā-haru-lāi pos-cha

milk-instr child.obl-pl-acc nourish-pres.3.sg
‘Through milk (one) nourishes children.’ [SB]

c. aba kāt-ne hisāb-le tyo gar-era diskāunṭ

now cut-nonfin account-instr that do-conj discount
gar-idi-nus
do-ben-imper.hon
‘Now, doing it with a “cutting calculation,” give me a discount.’ [V001001004;
F4]

d. bishnu simenṭ-le/#kāmdā-haru-le/#rām-le ghar

Bishnu cement-instr/#worker-pl-instr/#Ram-instr house
ban-āu-dai-cha
build-caus-cont-pres.3.sg
‘Bishnu is building a house using cement/#workers/#Ram.’ [BB]

In (222a) the spoon is a tool by which I, the agent, enact the event of eating rice.
In (222b) it is a little more difficult to tell whether ‘milk’ is an inanimate ergative-
marked subject (“Milk nourishes children”) or an instrumental (“Through milk (one)
nourishes children”). This is because in either case ‘milk’ is in the same place along
a causal chain by which milk nourishes children. The question of whether or not
‘milk’ is the subject, which is not at all obvious to native speakers, is the extent to
which ‘milk’ is construable as the initiator of the event. It is answered by determining
whether or not the verb can agree with the argument, and from SB’s judgments I
believe that it is in fact an instrumental. The third example requires some context:
the customer has asked the shopkeeper whether the shopkeeper tailors the clothes

263
after they are purchased. The shopkeeper replies that this service is not included and
the customer will have to tailor it herself. She responds with (222c), that he should
determine the price using a “cutting calculation” (i.e., taking the additional price of
tailoring into account). Here it is clear that the cutting calculation has not instigated
the event of determining the price, but it is rather an important component in the
process of making that determination. (222d) demonstrates that this instrumental
usage of -le appears to be restricted to non-volitional participants (BB allowed rām-le
in this sentence only under the assumption that this was the name of a particular
type of tool).

Secondly, we find -le marking verb forms which are either perfective (-eko) or non-
finite (-na). These reason clauses, following Butt and Poudel (2007), are a form
of instrumental in which the entire subordinate clause is implicated in enacting the
event in the main clause:

(223) a. pāunā āun-na-le ma timro bihā-mā jā-na

guest come-non.fin-instr I your wedding-loc come-non.fin
pā-ina
get-perf.1.sg.neg
‘Because of guests’ coming, I could not go to your wedding.’ (Butt and
Poudel 2007: 10)

b. “aphai-le” bhan-na-le āphno paisā tir-era ...

self-erg say-non.fin-instr self.gen money pay-conj ...
‘By saying “myself”, (I mean) paying my own money.’ [V001001004; M7]

Thirdly, there are erg/acc alternations with modal constructions of obligation:

(224) rām-le/rām-lāi ā~p khā-nu par-cha

Ram-erg/Ram-acc mango eat-non.fin need-pres.3.sg
‘Ram must eat mangoes.’ [AG]

Here the element marked by -le or -lāi is volitional, and the alternation correlates
with an internalized obligation versus an external force. One way of translating the

264
sentence with -le would be “Ram is obligated to eat mangoes,” whereas with -lāi it
would be “Ram is forced to eat mangoes.” The form with the ergative emphasizes
that Ram is the specific entity who has been designated to enact the event, whereas
with the accusative the emphasis is on the effect that the event has on Ram.

For all three of these usages of -le, as well as on subjects in main clauses, the form
marks an Effector of the event. This is not something which is the instigator or
main cause of the event, but it is a participant which is crucial in enacting the event
and effecting its completion.

6.1.2 Agents and Effectors

As discussed in section 3.2.4, Dowty (1991)’s Agent Protorole includes the follow-
ing properties: Volitionality, Sentience/Perception, Causation, and Movement. As
discussed in section 3.2.5, Næss (2004) takes the typical St to be Controlling and
Unaffected, while Fauconnier (2011) takes it to be an Instigator and an Affector.
In each case, we can distinguish between Agentive properties (Volitionality, Sen-
tience/Perception, Controlling, Instigator) which are properties of instigating an
event, and Effector properties (Causation, Movement, Unaffected, Affector) which are
properties of enacting/completing an event. Both Agentive and Effector properties are
found in prototypical Agents, but Effector properties are also shared by instrumentals.
Dowty notes that the entailments for an instrumental argument are Causation and
Movement, but not Volitionality or Sentience/Perception (Dowty 1991: 577).1 These
properties are used in different ways in each theory, but in each we can draw a dis-
tinction between those properties which relate to the initiation/instigation/ultimate
cause/control of the event, and those that relate to its being enacted and completed.

1. Dowty’s entailments pertain to particular predicates, but they constitute a prototype because
different predicates will have different entailments. This is distinct from my usage of the term
entailment below, in which a case marker entails certain properties and pragmatically implicates
others.

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A prototypical transitive subject has all of these properties, while instruments (in a
wide sense of the word) are any arguments which are not agents but which participate
in enacting and completing the event. This is schematized in Figure (6.1).

Figure 6.1: Properties of Transitive Subjects and Instruments

From Croft (2012: 282) I borrow the following definition of a transitive event pro-
totype: “The most prototypical transmission of force relationship that is profiled by a
simple verb in a canonical Transitive argument structure construction is by an initia-
tor with mental capacities exercising her/his control acting on a physical endpoint.”
In such an event, the transitive subject will tend to be a volitional, controlling agent
who initiates the event. Other participants in the event who are on the left side of
the causal chain (that is, those that are involved with effecting the event rather than
being affected by it) will be marked as antecedent obliques. Thus the transmission of
force will naturally go from Subject to Instrument to Object. While the subject will
typically be active throughout the duration of the event, the instrument is implicated
in the enacting of the event but not its initiation. From these observations I give the
following definition of an Effector:

(1) Effector: a participant implicated in effecting an event.

I prefer the term Effector rather than Causator to emphasize that this participant
plays a significant role in effecting or enacting the event but it is not necessarily the

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primary instigator of the event or its controller (although it can be). I also distinguish
it from Affector, which implies that this participant has an effect on the O participant,
whereas I want to emphasize the role that the -le has in effecting the event but remain
neutral about its role in having a particular impact on the object. For those other
features which are involved in instigating and controlling the event, I reserve the term
Agentive.
The prototypical St is both an Effector and an Agentive. An instrument is just
an Effector. The semantic meaning of the Nepali morphological form -le is that the
participant to which it attaches is an Effector. The Nepali ergative form can therefore
be schematized as an Effector on a transitive subject:

(2) erg = St + instr

The St will typically have both Agentive and Effector properties, and the addition
of the -le marker simply emphasizes the Effector properties. In a perfective clause it
is part of an obligatory paradigm in which the St must be marked. In imperfective
clauses -le varies with the nominative. It does not change the truth conditions of the
clause because it does not add any new information, but rather the use of the marker
makes prominent the subject as an effector of the event.
This is similar to Holisky (1987)’s analysis of nom/erg alternations in Tsova-
Tush. Holisky also distinguishes between Agentive and Effector roles, and notes
that the ergative in that language optionally picks out an Agentive as distinct from
an Effector. This leads to pragmatic implications of control and volitionality. It
is compatible with my analysis, because different morphological forms in different
languages will target slightly different properties. The Tsova-Tush ergative includes
agentive properties, but the Nepali ergative does not.
Many of the feature associations we have seen are attributable to the Effector
meaning of the ergative. Specifically, all the properties associated with Hopper and
Thompson (1980)’s Transitivity Hypothesis derive from -le emphasizing the effector

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role of the St in a transitive clause. Transitivity and Perfectivity are grammaticalized
associations which I discuss in section 6.4, but the other associations are implicatures
of greater or lesser strength. For example, there is the association with individuated
objects from section 4.1.5:

(225) u/usle māsu khān-daina

pro/pro.erg meat eat-pres.3.sg.neg
‘(S)he doesn’t eat meat’ / ‘(S)he won’t eat meat.’

Speakers may interpret the difference between these two sentences based on whether
māsu refers to meat in general or meat in a specific instance. The ergative correlates
with a usage in which the subject has a greater effect on the object and the event is
higher along a cline of transitivity. Similarly, the usage of the ergative is correlated
with other features of high transitive like realis mode (hence its preference in definite
future verb forms over hypothetical or simple present tense verb forms) and kinesis
(considering its possible preference in action-oriented verbs over non-action oriented
verbs). I discuss the relationship between Ergativity and Event Structure in section
6.4.

This is a pragmatic implicature rather than a semantic entailment, because the

St is an effector of the event whether it is marked with -le or not. Marking serves
to emphasize its role as an effector. This does not necessarily mean that marking it
as an effector implies that it is not agentive, because a typical St is both. Therefore,
we would not necessarily expect to find -le to be more common with indirect causa-
tion. This association could potentially develop over time as an opposition between
nominative and ergative forms, but there is not very much evidence that this has
happened in Nepali.2
2. One possible instance of this is TD’s intuition that the ergative form in Prakāsh-le curoṭ khāncha
“Prakash is smoking a cigarette” implies that he was forced to do so by his friends. Also, the usage
of -le in obligational modals is associated with internalized necessity but it may also emphasize that
the subject has less agency in the matter. But these are marginal cases.

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 The Nepali pattern differs from that of many other OEM languages in that ergative
alternations do not correlate with volitionality or agency. This is a consequence of the
meaning of -le, which does not have Agentive properties. In Hindi, for which there
exist alternations that correlate with volitionality, the ergative and instrumental are
not isomorphic. In a language in which the ergative and instrumental have the same
form and can be argued to contribute the same meaning, ergativity will not correlate
with volitionality but will have many of the other features of transitivity discussed
here.

This analysis implies that morphological forms with different nuances of mean-
ing may take part in ergative and accusative case marking systems. “Ergative” and
“instrumental” markers will have a different range of meanings in different languages
and these meanings may shift over time, take on new properties, and become gram-
maticalized into paradigms (a topic of the next section). For example, Figure (6.2)
overlays the -le and -lāi Nepali marker on Croft’s conceptual space for participant
roles, compared with the -se, -ne and -ko markers of Hindi (Croft 2012: 280).

This explanation covers many of the features we have seen, but it does not cover
those that are more problematic from the perspective of the Transitivity Hypothesis:
ergative marking is more common on unexpected (inanimate, non-first person) sub-
jects, and it is correlated with discourse prominence, characterizing predicates, and
categorical propositions.

Discourse prominence is inherent to markedness in an optional case marking sys-

tem. In the next section, I will develop a markedness-based account of variable and
obligatory case marking systems, taking as an example the use of gendered morphol-
ogy in English. I apply this to ergative marking to derive the discourse prominence-
based feature associations we find with Nepali, and conclude with a discussion of
grammaticalization and event structure.

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Figure 6.2: Nepali and Hindi Case Markers in Croft’s Conceptual Space for Partici-
pant Roles

6.2 On Markedness and Variability

The fundamental argument presented here is that all of the feature correlations re-
lating to the case expression of St are attributable to an oppositional asymmetry
between the marked ergative form (-le) and the unmarked nominative form. In this
section I argue that there is a scale of markedness that ranges from inclusive asym-
metry to polar opposition. Outside of perfective transitive clauses, the usage of the
Nepali ergative is pragmatically conditioned and is associated with gradient tenden-
cies rather than categorical divisions, indicating that the ergative is implicated in
an opposition of inclusive asymmetry rather than polar opposition. The distinction
between obligatory and optional case marking is due to a grammaticalization of this

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opposition between the presence of a marker and its absence.

6.2.1 Opposition with a Zero Form

The clearest cases of semantic markedness are those in which there is an opposition
between the presence and absence of a form. In Nepali, this is generally the case for
ergative marking of the St (-le/-∅) and for accusative marking on the O (-lāi/-∅), as
well as marking of number on noun phrases (-haru/-∅). In the simplest case there
is an iconic relationship between a marked form and a marked meaning, such that
the additional form corresponds with a more restricted meaning. This is formal
markedness.

Markedness asymmetries that exist between two overt forms will tend to be more
complex, because it is rarely the case that two overt forms are truly oppositional. For
example, various lexical pairs represent asymmetric oppositions in English (tall/short,
big/small). The first of the pair is considered to be the unmarked because of examples
like the following:

(226) She is five feet seven inches tall/#short.

However, “tall” and “short” are not simply opposed, either symmetrically or asym-
metrically. The word “short” can also be a description of length in the separate
opposition short/long. Only “tall” can describe the size of a latte, and only “short”
can describe an insufficient amount of cash. While they may represent oppositions in
many contexts, a full lexical entry for each of these terms would necessarily include
properties which distinguish them beyond whether or not they refer to a height as
[+/-dimunitive].

Similarly, Jakobson (1936) takes the instrumental and dative cases in Russian to
represent a markedness asymmetry, in which the instrumental is [+peripheral] and
the dative is [-peripheral], for which “a peripheral case presupposes the presence

271
of a central point in the context of the utterance, which the peripheral case helps
determine” (Jakobson 2011a: 79). These cases presumably have distinct regular and
idiosyncratic meanings beyond whether or not the case-marked argument is periph-
eral.

Oppositions between zero forms can also shift in meaning over time, and when
they take on additional meanings they become less symmetrical. This is true for many
gendered lexical items English, in which the historical opposition may simply have
been between a zero form and a feminine marker, but over time the full feminine lexical
item takes on divergent and often negative connotations: hence governor/governess,
master/mistress, fox/vixen.

The ergative/nominative case alternation in Nepali is largely an alternation be-

tween a case-marker and a zero-form (excepting a small number of oblique forms).
This makes it particularly amenable to an analysis based on semantic markedness.
We can make the assumption that fundamentally the only meanings at issue are those
that are contributed by the one morphological form, the postposition (-le).

More broadly, this analysis will be applicable to any language with optional erga-
tive marking, as defined by McGregor (2010) as a system in which the ergative marker
alternates with its absence. The issues brought up here will have relevance for any
optional case marking system, and to ergative-marking patterning in general.

6.2.2 Obligatory Marking and Grammatical Context

In applying markedness theory to the semantics and pragmatics of argument realiza-

tion, it is important to distinguish between obligatory, grammaticalized oppositions
on the one hand and variable, pragmatically-conditioned oppositions on the other.
This will be represented as a gradient scale of markedness that corresponds to the
extent to which the two forms are grammaticalized as a symmetric opposition. An
example of obligatory opposition is the grammatical category of number in English

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noun phrases.

(227) a. I baked the biscuit.

b. I baked the biscuit-s.

In (227a), the singular form of ‘biscuit,’ a zero-form with no overt number marking,
entails that the denoted entity is singular. In (227b), the plural marker (-s) has the
effect of entailing that the denoted entity is a plurality. I cannot say “I baked the
biscuit” to refer specifically to the act of baking several biscuits, and I cannot say
“I baked the biscuits” to refer specifically to the act of baking a single biscuit. In
other words, plural marking is obligatory in English. Encoded in the grammar is a
requirement that a (count) noun phrase be marked to specify whether it is singular
or plural.3

Thus in this grammatical context the only available interpretation is the minus
interpretation. The presence of (-s) on an NP signals the property [+plural], and
the absence of (-s) signals [-plural]. The first half of (6.3) is a visual representation
of this pattern.

This contrasts with the Nepali plural marker -haru. The Nepali plural marker also
signals the property [+plural], but generally its absence says nothing about whether
the noun phrase referent is singular or plural. The only interpretation available is the
zero-interpretation (depicted in the second part of Figure 6.3). This, ultimately, is
what is meant when a grammatical category is described as “optional”: it signals a
particular meaning when it is present, but it does not participate in a grammatical-
ized (polar) opposition with a zero form (Andrews 1990). Its usage is pragmatically
conditioned in the sense that whether or not a form is present in a particular clause
depends upon the context of the discourse, the conventions of conversational strategy
(e.g., Gricean constraints on quantity and relevance), and the whims of the speaker
3. Excepting forms in which the singular and plural are identical, as in ‘sheep’, ‘fish’, etc.

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 Figure 6.3: Noun Phrase Number Marking in English and Nepali

in choosing which information to present. It is like an adjective in that it simply

adds extra information when it is included. However, with an adjective there is even
less of a sense in which the form is in an oppositional relationship with its absence.
The apprehension of two forms as being in an oppositional relationship, as I discuss
below, is a matter of degrees.

(228) a. maile yo biskuṭ ban-ā-ẽ

I.erg this biscuit build-caus-perf.1.sg
‘I made this biscuit/these biscuits.’

b. maile yo biskuṭ-haru ban-ā-ẽ

I.erg this biscuit-pl build-caus-perf.1.sg

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 ‘I made these biscuits.’4

c. maile yo miṭho biskuṭ-haru ban-ā-ẽ

I.erg this delicious biscuit-pl build-caus-perf.1.sg
‘I made these delicious biscuits.’

If I were to hand someone a platter of biscuits and say, in English, “I baked this
biscuit,” the natural interpretation of number would be a minus interpretation. The
recipient of the biscuits would try to make sense of this statement by assuming I am
referring to a single one in the group. In Nepali, the statement maile yo biskuṭ banāẽ
could naturally refer to the entire batch.

The primary interpretation for Nepali number-marking on argument noun phrases

is a zero-interpretation, therefore number marking is optional. This is also the case
for gender-marking in Nepali. And in the imperfective grammatical domain, this is
the case for ergative marking on the St . For each of these systems, the absence of
marking signals nothing.

In English, the minus-interpretation prevails with number-marking on argument

noun phrases, gender marking in English pronouns, and in accusative marking on
pronominal forms. To the extent that the minus interpretation is required in a par-
ticular grammatical context, marking is obligatory. A good example of optional
marking in English is derivational morphology that encodes gender (in particular,
the ‘-ess’ feminine marker).5

The zero-interpretation is apparent from examples like (229a). Both ‘lion’ and
‘lioness’ are possible in a context for which the most likely interpretation is a female
referent. This suggests that the word ‘lion’ is unspecified for gender. Even when
agreement in gender is required by the grammar, as in (229b), most English speakers

4. There is also variation in plural agreement with the determiner yo/yi ‘this’/‘these’.

5. The ‘who’/‘whom’ distinction, for those English speakers who allow both in O position, is
another example of an optional opposition in English (suggested to me by Larry Horn). Here the
distinction has come to be associated with stylistic register.

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will still accept ‘lion.’

(229) a. Lions/Lionesses give birth to litters of between one and four cubs.

b. The lion/lioness licked her cubs.

However, in other cases with ‘-ess’ the minus-interpretation is more common. This
can be problematic for oppositions like ‘actor’ and ‘actress.’ On the one hand, ‘actor’
can be unspecified for gender as in (230a). On the other hand, many speakers of
English today would not accept (230b), although this usage is shifting. And there
is a ‘slipperiness’ to (230c) (to borrow the term from Waugh 1982), between an
interpretation which includes female performers (zero-interpretation) and one which
excludes them (minus-interpretation).

(230) a. The Screen Actors Guild and its affiliated unions represent nearly 200,000
film actors and other media professionals.

b. ?The actor received universal acclaim for her nuanced portrayal of a com-
puter hacker.

c. Who is the greatest actor of the 1990s?

This is significant, because it illustrates that markedness opposition is only a relevant

concept to a particular context. In this case, a significant part of that context is the
lexical item to which ‘-ess’ attaches. Acquisition of the lexical items ‘lion’ and ‘actor’
will be slightly different for every speaker of English. They will include a slightly
different cluster of properties because they will be based on different experiences, but
there will almost always be enough overlap to allow for communication. Another
part of the context comes from the discourse, in which some of these properties will
be emphasized over others. So gender might not be a particularly salient property
for the term ‘lion’, but it might be made more salient in the context of a particular
description of lion behavior in a nature documentary.

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6.2.3 Gradient Markedness in English Gender Marking

The issue with the ‘actor’/‘actress’ opposition is the extent to which masculinity is
an inherently salient property of the lexical item ‘actor’. Or, equivalently, we can
describe it as the extent to which -ess/-∅ are in polar opposition in the context of
the word ‘actor’.
When the zero-interpretation is the only one available, the opposition is one of
complete inclusive asymmetry. This is the case when the given context does not
carry strong connotations of gender, as with the lexical item ‘lion.’ The diagram be-
low depicts the semantic entailments (the properties connected by solid lines) of the
lexical item ‘lion’ and the ‘-ess’ feminine marker (with the double line representing
affixation).

The sense in which ‘lion’/‘lioness’ are in opposition is fairly minimal, because

the property of masculinity is not a salient property of ‘lion’ (outside of a particular
discourse context in which gender is relevant). So we have a situation of inclusive
asymmetry, in which the marked form ‘lion’ is unspecified for gender and ‘lioness’ has
the exact same meaning with an additional specification of gender. The -ess marker
in such a situation is highly variable and subject to speaker choice: a speaker might
use either ‘lion’ or ‘lioness’ in any particular context. It is very nearly equivalent to
a noun phrase with a descriptive adjective, as in ‘female lion.’
The ‘actor’/‘actress’ opposition is more ambiguous between a zero-interpretation
and a minus interpretation in which ‘actor’ is considered the masculine form of a pair.

277
It is also ambiguous because different speakers will differ in the extent to which they
consider the terms to be in opposition. This is not because masculinity is an entailed
part of the meaning of ‘actor.’ Rather, for cultural and social reasons masculinity is
somewhat more salient as a property (represented below with dotted lines indicating
an implicature). It is not an entailed part of the meaning to the extent that a sen-
tence like “My favorite actor is female” is possible.

This is a marked context for ‘-ess’ because of the clash between the masculine
property of the root and the feminine property of the marker. If the root form pro-
vides a marked context, then the marker will be more common, and the balance of the
scales will tip from inclusive asymmetry (zero-interpretation) towards polar opposi-
tion (minus-interpretation). To the extent that a zero-interpretation is still possible,
the marker will still be optional in the sense that both its presence and absence are
grammatical in a given clause. As the scale tips towards polar opposition, both the
usage and the non-usage of a particular morpheme will be considered meaningful. In
this situation, there is a greater likelihood that deviating from a perceived norm will
have pragmatic implications. This is why the ‘actor’/‘actress’ opposition is slippery
in a way that ‘lion’/‘lioness’ is not.

Thus the term ‘actress’ is marked because of the salience of masculinity as a

property in the root form. The masculine property is not entailed in the meaning of
‘actor,’ but for some speakers it is a strong implicature that is closer to a semantic
entailment. For these speakers ‘actor’/‘actress’ nearly represents a polar opposition.

278
This is why many people reject the word ‘actress’ altogether: they wish to avoid the
implication of a minus-interpretation (that the prototypical, default actor is male).6
Finally, there are some oppositions for which the minus-interpretation is the only
one available. This means that there is a simple polar opposition between a mascu-
line/feminine pair. This is the point at which marking becomes obligatory. A good
example of this type of opposition is the pair ‘prince’/‘princess.’ For most speakers,
the word ‘prince’ must refer to the male form and ‘princess’ to the female form, and
the cover term ‘prince’ cannot refer to both.7

English lexical items which take the -ess marker represent a scale of markedness
contexts based upon the extent to which masculinity is a salient property. At the
point where the property of masculinity becomes an entailment for the root lexical
item, there is a full apprehension of prince/princess as an opposition. The pair become
part of an obligatory paradigm. This scale of markedness is schematized in Figure
(6.4).
This scale represents a synchronic representation of markedness contexts, but it
can also describe the process by which an optional opposition shifts and becomes
more marked over time until the opposition becomes part of a paradigm. Lehmann
(1989) describes such a connection between markedness and grammaticalization in
6. See, for example, Sims (2017) on the push for gender-neutral award categories.

7. There is some historical evidence for the usage of ‘prince’ with a zero interpretation. In response
to her councillor Robert Cecil telling her that she must go to bed, Queen Elizabeth I is said to have
exclaimed, “Must! Is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! Thy father, if
he had been alive, durst not have used that word” (from Knowles 2014, suggested by Larry Horn).
But I believe many modern English speakers would reject this gender-neutral usage of ‘prince.’

279
 Figure 6.4: Scale of Markedness

the creation of the paradigm of definite/indefinite articles in English, which originally

came from non-obligatory markers (the numeral ‘one’ and the demonstrative ‘that’).

Case marking of core arguments is a different domain of grammar than that of

gendered derivational morphology, but the same interplay between markedness and
grammaticalization leads to the patterns we find in Nepali case marking.

6.2.4 Gradient Markedness on the Transitive Subject

In the Observation section I concluded that Nepali does not have a categorical split
based upon the semantics of the St referent. Rather, ergative marking is probabilisti-
cally less common on first person pronouns, more common with (non-human) animate

280
common nouns, and even more common with inanimate common nouns.
Overt arguments in the St position are typically local (SAP), particularly first
person pronouns. They are overwhelmingly animate. However, none of these gen-
eralizations are categorical. Inanimate subjects are rare but possible in Nepali, and
the Instigator and Effector properties are part of a markedness prototype. Therefore,
they represent implicatures of varying strengths. We can represent the role of -le
in the grammatical context of an St below. In the diagram below, implicatures are
represented by dashed lines, and semantic entailments are solid lines:

The speaker has a choice of marking a particular overt transitive subject with -le
or leaving it unmarked. There are different possible motivations for usage.

(1) If the referent of the argument is inanimate, it is in a (semantically) marked

position as an St , and the speaker will be very likely to use -le to distinguish the
argument as the effector of the event rather than an affected object. It is not
crucial that the argument is disambiguated as the St in particular, but merely
that it is on the effecting side of a force-dynamic event rather than on the
affected side. This is why some inanimate arguments are seemingly ambiguous
between subjects and instrumentals.8

(2) Similarly, if the subject referent has an unexpected role in the sentence (as in
“The mouse ate the cat”), the usage of -le is more likely. It is one strategy a
8. “This explains the extremely common syncretism of ergative or passive agent case with instru-
mental; the case-form does not refer to agentivity (on which supposition its use for non-agentive
instruments is anomalous), but rather to activity in the initial phase of the event, which notion is
equally applicable to agents and instruments” (DeLancey 1981: 634)

281
 speaker will use to disambiguate the roles of each participant.

(3) If the referent of the argument is a speech act participant, and particularly if it
is the speaker, then it is in a (semantically) unmarked position as an St . The
speaker will have no need to distinguish it from an affected object, which would
typically be case-marked if it is an SAP. In most cases the speaker will not use
-le. As with lion/lioness, the usage of the marked element simply provides extra
information by entailing that the entity is an effector of the event. Hence the
intuition that “I am building a house” with an ergative-marked subject implies
that the house is being built by and for the speaker.

(4) The usage of -le creates a marked form which is inherently more prominent in
discourse. It may also be used to imply a particular interpretation of the event.
I discuss this in the next sections.

Let us assume a slightly different system in which inanimate subjects are obliga-
torily ergative-marked in Nepali. This may in fact be true for some speakers of Nepali
today, or it may become true in the future. This would imply the grammaticalization
of an opposition between animate nouns (for which the ergative is variable with the
nominative) and inanimate nouns (for which the ergative is obligatory). The mecha-
nism involved would be the implicature that an St is animate, which would become an
entailment in the nominative form. Thus, a paradigm would be created in which the
nominative form is in opposition with the ergative form. The variability still exists
as before, but only for subjects with animate reference. The only form available to
subjects with inanimate reference is the ergative.

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 Alternatively, we could imagine a system in which local pronouns cannot be
ergative-marked in Nepali. There would be a categorical split between local pronouns
and other types of nouns. This would be somewhat like the Marathi system, except
there would be ergative/nominative alternations outside of the local domain. This re-
quires an alteration to the core semantic meaning of the ergative marker. Specifically,
there would be an extra entailment that would exclude -le on local pronouns:

If a system emerges such that ergative marking is obligatory in one domain (non-
local pronouns) and nominative marking is obligatory in elsewhere, then there is an
entailment on both the nominative form (that it must be a local pronoun) and on the
ergative form (that it cannot), which separates their usage into different categorical
domains:

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 Finally, let us return to a system in which there are no categorical splits based on
the semantics of the noun phrase. In Hindi and Tsova-Tush we find pragmatic alter-
nations associated with Agentive properties (Volitionality and Control, but following
Fauconnier’s terms I tentatively subsume these under the Instigator proto-property).
This indicates that the ergative marker in these languages has an Instigator entail-
ment. The properties emphasized by choosing to mark a subject with the ergative
are those that pertain to an Agent instigating an event.

Volitional alternations that are found in one language but not another are due to
the precise semantic contribution of the subject marker. The Hindi instrumental is
not homophonous with the ergative, and so there is no synchronic evidence to the
learner that there should be an affinity in meaning. It would be a useful typological
study to compare languages with ergative/instrumental syncretisms to those without
and see whether they are less likely to participate in alternations associated with
volitionality.

Differential object marking in Nepali and other Indo-Aryan languages may be

worked out in a similar way. Here I will briefly sketch the basics of such an analysis.
The relevant fact about the -lāi accusative marker (as well as Hindi -ko) is that
it is homophonous with the dative marker, which obligatorily marks the goal in a
ditransitive construction. The core meaning of -lāi is that the marked element is a
Recipient of the action, and there is a strong implicature in Nepali that the marked
element is animate. The typical object is a common noun (animate or inanimate),
and it has the general property of being Affected by the event. The marker will be

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very common on Proper Nouns and Pronouns and uncommon on inanimate nouns.
In Hindi the connection is an entailment: the nominative object must be a common
noun.

These analyses does not make reference to either Neutralization or Markedness

Reversal, because markedness oppositions are defined solely within a given context.
Markedness arises from the interaction of prototype properties in a local environment.
There is no inherent reason for marking on the St and O to behave in opposite ways,
except that some (but not all) relevant properties of the St prototype have opposing
values to those of the O prototype.

6.3 Variable Ergativity and Prominence

An optional case marking system is one in which a case marker alternates with its
absence. In such a system, it will always be the case that the marked form has
an increased salience in the discourse. The speaker chooses to draw attention to
this element or some aspect of its properties with the addition of a morphological
form. This choice may have different pragmatic motivations, but no matter the
intention and interpretation, one of the effects will be that the given element is more
prominent. This is ultimately a feature of markedness: a morphologically marked
form is inherently prominent in a variable system.

Grierson (1904a), Clark (1963) and others have noted that the Nepali ergative
form is more “emphatic.” McGregor (2010)’s crosslinguistic analysis of optional erga-
tive marking associates usage of the ergative form with prominent subjects and usage
of the unmarked nominative (in his terms, non-usage of the ergative form) with back-
grounded subjects. Prominence is associated with different properties in different
languages, but these may include contrastive focus, unexpected subjects, and sub-
jects that are high in agency or potency.

285
 I believe that agency/potency is a separate issue that depends upon the semantics
of the given marker (as discussed in the previous section). The other two features are
inherent to any optional case marking system: the case-marked form of an argument
will be more likely in a marked context, i.e., when the argument is unexpected. Con-
trastive focus (or, rather, contrastive topic) is a consequence of marking the subject
as a particular entity in the discourse. This is Kuroda’s categorical proposition, in
which a particular entity is apprehended, and then something is predicated of that
entity. Ultimately it is a consequence of morphological markedness.

This does not mean that an ergative-marked element must be the subject of a
categorical proposition, or be the topic, or have contrastive focus, or be unexpected.
Being pragmatically-conditioned, the usage of the ergative marker will have multiple
motivations, but all of them draw attention to the marked element. Prominence is
a matter of degrees, and different elements may be made salient or backgrounded in
the same clause. An overt argument is already somewhat prominent in a language for
which both subjects and objects may be elided, and adding ergative marking increases
its prominence. Usage of the contrastive topic marker cāhĩ increases it even more and
is the preferred method for introducing a new topic.

Discourse prominence will be a relevant factor in any optional case marking sys-
tem. In differential object marking systems as well, accusative case will tend to
correlate with topicality of the object, as well as definiteness. Aissen (2003) predicts
accusative marking to be associated with animacy and definiteness, and conversely for
ergative marking to be associated with inanimacy and indefiniteness of the referent.
In fact what we find is that both accusative marking and ergative marking correlate
with definiteness. Definiteness is not an inherent property of accusative or ergative
marking, but is rather a feature of markedness. Outside of the domain of St and O
marking, plural marking will also be more common on definite referents.

In the realm of Nepali ergativity, we have seen several feature correlations that

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have to do with definiteness, but none of them are categorical (with the possible
exception of the quantifier dheraijaso requiring an ergative marker). There is the
intuition that the ergative form is “picking out” a particular entity from a group, and
the affinity for the ergative with strongly construed sets, particularly with ambiguous
quantifiers. These are elements that tend to already be salient in the discourse. Fur-
thermore, we do not generally find these correlations showing up in survey judgments.
Perhaps this is because they are highly dependent upon the particular context and
the extent to which the given arguments are already salient in the discourse.

One feature which requires further explanation is the correlation between subject
and word order. Ergative-marked subjects are often found post-verbally in what Butt
and King (1996) deem the position for backgrounded information. While arguments in
these positions tend to contain old information rather than new information (i.e., are
definite), they are also less prominent. This is unexpected coming from the position
that ergative-marking is associated with prominence. More corpus work would be
useful to determine exactly how common ergative-marked subjects are in each of
these positions. Additionally, more research is needed to precisely determine the
relation between word order and discourse structure in Nepali. Perhaps the subject
isn’t backgrounded so much as the predicate is more salient in the discourse. This
would be related to another curious fact about variable ergativity in Nepali, the
correlation with individual-level predicates.

6.3.1 Predicate Prominence

Discourse prominence also affects the interpretation of the event. Butt and Poudel
(2007) note a correlation between individual-level predicates and ergative marking
in the simple present tense. I have argued that this is actually an effect of the ten-
dency for ergative-marked subjects to be associated with categorical propositions. In
Brentano’s double judgment, the first judgment consists of apprehending and affirm-

287
ing the existence of an entity, and the second judgment consists of predicating of
it a particular property. A categorical judgment will be used on generic statements
with subjects that are kinds, as in kukur-le māsu khān-cha “Dogs eat meat,” and we
find that the ergative is more common on such statements. A categorical proposition
is also generally the only possible response to a question about a particular entity
rather than a state of affairs, which is why we find the tendency for a question with
an ergative to have a response with an ergative.

I have also noted the tendency for the ergative to correlate with a characterizing
reading of a predicate. Thus while ma curoṭ khān-chu “I smoke” with a nominative
subject may be a statement about an occasional practice, with an ergative subject
the interpretation may be that smoking is a habit or an addiction. The predicate is
construed as individual-level either way, but in the second case the predicate has more
of an inherent connection to the subject. Similarly, the ergative may be associated
with an occupation or some other quality that is inherent to the speaker.9

We find these interpretations particularly in the simple present verb form, for
which the event is ambiguous between stage-level and individual-level, present-oriented
and future-oriented. The interpretations are not categorical, and they can be can-
celled by other considerations.

Predicate prominence appears to be another effect of discourse prominence on the

subject. We expect categorical propositions to correlate with individual-level pred-
icates and definiteness (Ladusaw 2000). In the simple present, this distinction may
be moving in the direction of becoming operationalized as an aspectual distinction
encoded by noun and verb morphology.10

9. For a different verb form, the continuous, we might also include here the intuition with maile
ghar ban-āu-dai-chu ‘I am building a house’, where the ergative might be used to indicate that the
speaker is building a house for her own usage.

10. This is already the case with the perfective verb forms requiring ergative marking on the
subject, which I discuss in the next section.

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 In the simple present tense, one interpretation of the ergative is that the event
expressed is individual-level, distinguishing a habitual from an ongoing reading of
the event. This goes against a prediction of Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s Transi-
tivity Hypothesis, because the prototypical transitive event is punctual rather than
durative.11 Indeed, this interpretation apparently conflicts with another possible in-
terpretation that straightforwardly accords with the Transitivity Hypothesis:

(231) Nominative correlates with a future/ongoing reading; ergative correlates with

a habitual reading:

a. ma kām gar-chu
I work do-pres.1.sg
‘I am doing work.’ / ‘I will do work.’ [SB]

b. maile kām gar-chu

I work do-pres.1.sg
‘I do work.’ [SB]

(232) Nominative correlates with a general activity; ergative correlates with a spe-
cific activity:

a. ma kām gar-chu
I work do-pres.1.sg
‘I do work.’/‘I work.’ [SB]

b. maile kām gar-chu

I work do-pres.1.sg
‘I am doing the/a job.’ [SB]

When asked about the difference between a nominative/ergative alternation with a

simple present tense transitive sentence like those above, some consultants associated
the habitual reading with the ergative, and others associated the habitual reading

11. Although Croft, following Hopper and Thompson, notes that the prototypical punctual event
has a durative counterpart, which is “not as prototypical but is widely treated as another instance
of the transitive event prototype” (Croft 2012: 355).

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with the nominative. This is because of two competing possible interpretations of
marking on the subject.

In (231b), the ergative-marked subject is more prominent. This is particularly

the case with a first person pronoun, for which ergative marking is the least likely
because it is the most frequent form in St position. The predicate is interpreted
as more inherent to the subject, hence a habitual interpretation. This is Butt and
Poudel (2007)’s observation.

Another possible interpretation does not relate to discourse prominence in itself

but rather to the meaning of -le as an effector and as part of the ergative paradigm.
In (232b) the event is construed as being more prototypically transitive, with a highly
individuated object. This favors an ongoing interpretation rather than a habitual one.

The fact that these conflicting interpretations are both possible suggests that ha-
bituality is epiphenomenal, and it illustrates the pragmatic nature of variable ergative
marking. The speaker may either be emphasizing the subject and its relation to the
predicate, or the speaker may be emphasizing the transitivity of the event.

In the next subsection I discuss more generally the effect of ergative marking on
event structure.

6.4 Ergativity and Event Structure

Most of the feature correlations that relate to event structure follow the predictions
of Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s Transitivity Hypothesis. In general, these feature
correlations are pragmatic rather than semantic; they do not represent categorical
splits in the language. Rather, they are general tendencies. Hopper and Thompson
caution that their hypothesis is only applicable to obligatory feature correlations, but
with the exception of individual-level predication (discussed above), their predictions
do in fact accord with these observations:

290
 (1) That ergative marking is restricted to transitives (following Hopper and Thomp-
son’s Participant property)

(2) The preference for the ergative on the Definite Future over the Hypothetical
Future (following Hopper and Thompson’s Mode)

(3) That ergative marking is obligatory with perfective transitives (following Hop-
per and Thompson’s Aspect)

(4) That ergativity is obligatory in the perfective main clause but optional in all
subordinate clauses (also following Mode)

Below, the overall event structure of a transitive clause is represented with Hop-
per and Thompson’s prototypical properties for transitive events. The double arrow
represents the transmission of force from the subject to the object.12 The square in
the center is the verb and whatever morphological material is associated with the
event described by the clause. The ‘Subject’ and ‘Object’ implicatures taken together
represent requirements on the presence of St and O (the Participants property).

Ergative marking crosslinguistically correlates with these properties of a proto-

typical transitive event (particularly the correlation between ergative marking and
perfectivity, which I discuss below). This is unexpected under the assumption that
12. This can be understood as a simplified version of Croft (2012)’s three-dimensional represen-
tation of causal and aspectual structure (Croft 2012: 212). The arguments are arranged from left
to right representing the transmission of force. In Croft’s formulation the overall event is structured
into separate subevents for each participant, whereas I simplify the structure by associating the
entire event with the morphological structure of the verb and state implicatures and entailments
rather than representing them diagrammatically.

291
markedness is associated with deviations from a prototype. If the ergative marks less
prototypical subjects (such as inanimates), then why should it mark more prototypical
events?
Rather than seeking a deviation from the prototype, it is important to consider
the semantic meaning contributed by the ergative and possible motivations for its
usage. With an inanimate subject the preference for the ergative comes from the
necessity to discriminate the argument as an effector of the event. The St position
is semantically marked for inanimates. Compare this with a hypothetical correlation
between ergative marking and kinesis: ergative marking is more common on action
verbs like “eat” and less common on non-action verbs like “watch.”

(233) a. The dog ate the rat.

b. The dog watched the rat.

In both cases the ergative will be helpful to distinguish the St , and will be more
common if the St referent is unexpected (as in “The rat ate the dog”). Another
usage of the ergative may be to emphasize the dog’s role in effecting the event (or,
in some languages, its volitionality/agency). The watching event is a deviation from
the transitive prototype, while the eating event is more prototypical. But there is not
a motivation to specify that the dog is an effector simply because the event is not a
prototypical one. If the speaker wishes to emphasize the dog’s role in effecting the
watching event, they can do so with the ergative, but this will be in opposition to other
watching events, not to events in general. Furthermore, the motivation to specify the
dog as an effector via ergative marking (or to imply its lack of effectiveness with the
nominative) will be much more common with action verbs than with non-action verbs.
The distinction will tend to be more relevant. If ergative marking comes to be used
very commonly with action verbs, then there might be a grammaticalized entailment
between ergative marking and the category of action verbs. In fact, entailments can
occur between any of these related properties in the transitivity prototype, and this

292
forms the basis of the Transitivity Hypothesis.

Different properties are grammaticalized as entailments in different languages.

There are two domains which in Nepali represent categorical splits in ergative-nominative
case marking. Ergative marking is disallowed in copular clauses and unaccusative in-
transitives. I have argued that most if not all reported instances of Si marking with
unergative intransitives should be analyzed as St marking on a transitive clause with
an elided object. Thus, ergative marking is restricted to the St position in Tran-
sitive clauses. Secondly, ergative marking is obligatory in transitive clauses with
Perfective verb forms, and variable elsewhere.

6.4.1 Ergative Marking in Transitive Clauses

If we define -le as an ergative marker, then its inability to appear in intransitives or

copular clauses is straightforward. By its definition, it will be restricted to the St
position of a transitive clause. If the contribution of this marker is, more broadly,
as an Effector (or as an Instigator, or both), we might then expect an active-stative
alignment to be possible. Its usage is expanded to include an Si that effects the
given event (i.e., the subject of unergative intransitives). It will be unavailable with
unaccusative clauses like “The ghee melted” because the Si here is being affected by
the event rather than effecting it:

Whereas it may be available with unergative clauses like “I walked,” in which the
lone participant does effect the event:

293
 An instrumental argument is generally possible with intransitives (hence “I walked
with a walking stick”). So if -le contributes the same meaning as it does in an
instrumental, we might expect an active-stative alignment. This relates to the precise
meaning of Effector, and my preference of this term over Fauconnier’s prototypical
St property Affector. The question is whether it indicates an affect upon another
participant, or whether it simply relates to the maintenance (and perhaps completion)
of the event itself.
It is note entirely clear whether ergativity has an effect on the interpretation of
the object in transitive clauses, as I discussed in the Observations section on ergative
marking and the object. For example, it does not appear to correlate with an object
being completely affected (e.g. in “I tipped over the chair”), nor does the nominative
correlate with the object being partially affected. However, I have noted that the
ergative may be correlated with a highly individuated object, as in maile kām gar-
chu “I am doing a job.”
More significantly, in the Observations section on intransitives I made the case
that -le is in fact restricted to St . Verbs like khelnu ‘to play’ and gāunu ‘to sing’ are
typically transitive whether or not the object is overtly realized. For some speakers,
it is possible to construe khelnu as intransitive, which explains the possibility of a
nominative form in ma khelẽ “I played.” Unergative intransitives like hiḍnu ‘to walk’
or vācnu ‘to live’ may be construed as transitive if there is an implied object, which
explains the possibility of an ergative form with usle jiwān rāmrari vāc-yo “He lived
his life well.”

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 Thus -le takes on additional qualities when it is incorporated into the ergative
pattern. These include to both the effecting of an event and the affecting of an object,
following the expected pattern of high transitivity. This apparently rises to the level
of a semantic restriction against -le on Si . If this is in fact a categorical distinction,
then we must distinguish between (1) the meaning entailed by the postposition -le as
an effector from (2) the meaning entailed by the ergative (St -le) in a transitive clause.
The generalization given below relates specifically to ergative case:

If an St is case-marked ergative, there is an entailment (contributed by -le) that

it is an effector of the event. There is also an implicature that the object is affected
by the event.13 The verbal morphology entails the event properties relating to event
structure. In particular, the lexical semantics of the verb root tell us whether there
is an (overt or covert) subject and object. Ergative marking is only possible in a
transitive clause, which is depicted diagramatically above by the entailments that
both a subject and an object must be present. This whole frame is in a paradigmatic
opposition with the nominative form depicted below, for which there is no entailment
that both a subject and object must be present:

13. This is not an entailment, because ergative marking is possible in transitive clauses in which
the object is not affected by the event, e.g. maile miṭho awāj sunẽ “I heard a beautiful sound.”

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 Thus nominative case may be found in both transitive and intransitive events,
while ergative case is restricted to transitive events.

6.4.2 The Connection between Ergativity and Perfectivity

The other obligatory feature correlation is between perfectivity and ergativity. This
is the most common source of an aspectual split in ergative/nominative patterning,
both for Indo-Aryan and for ergative languages in general. Hopper and Thompson
(1980) conclude that telicity (under which they include both lexically telic verbs and
verbs with perfective morphology) is associated with high transitivity. However, the
connection between ergativity and perfectivity is a particularly close association.
On the one hand, there is a very clear diachronic source for this connection.
Ergativity arose in Indo-Aryan from the reanalysis of a deverbal construction into
a general perfective form, and Nepali inherits ergative morphology in those modern
verb forms which have perfective aspectual reference. The viewpoint of Anderson
(1977) and Garrett (1990) is that the common association between ergativity and
perfective aspect is entirely due to this grammaticalization pathway. It is an accident
of history rather than evidence of an inherent semantic correlation.14
However, it is less clear that ergativity arose in Tibeto-Burman through this di-
achronic pathway, and yet in many of these languages ergative marking (or agentive
14. “Since ergative morphology is often triggered by perfective aspect in particular, it has been
argued that the two have some intrinsic connection or share some inherent feature. However, as
Anderson (1988: 340-49) argues, this type of theoretical claim results from a failure to appreciate
the diachronic evidence” (Garrett 1990: 262).

296
marking) is sensitive to perfectivity, even if the correlation is pragmatic rather than
semantic for some languages. Meanwhile, Nepali learners inherit a system in which
ergative marking is variable in transitive clauses except in perfective clauses where it
is obligatory. Where it is variable, ergativity is associated with many different factors
relating to the transitivity of the clause.

Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s explanation for perfectivity as a marker of tran-

sitivity is based on their theory that transitivity is tied to prominence in discourse
structure: perfective events tend to move the discourse forward, while imperfective
events tend to be scene-setting. So here the connection between ergativity is theoreti-
cally motivated but indirect: ergativity is associated with transitivity, and perfectivity
is also associated with transitivity.

A common intuition about the connection between ergativity and perfectivity

relates to the observation that perfective clauses profile the result state rather than
the initiation of the event. Thus Dixon (1994) notes that the ergative St /O grouping is
more natural with completed events, because in non-realized events the focus is on the
initiator of the action rather than the result, and initiators are Si or St (Dixon 1994:
98-99). Similarly, DeLancey (1981) argues that nominative/accusative patterning
profiles the agent and initiation of the event, while ergative/absolutive morphology
profiles the patient and its result (the unmarked form is profiled in each case). The
perfective profiles the result state (as do passive constructions), while the imperfective
profiles the initiation of the event. Languages with perfective ergative-splits do not
allow a clash between aspect and case-marking (DeLancey 1981: 646).

These arguments are intrinsically based on markedness. In the perfective, the

subject is marked (both morphologically and semantically) because the result state
and the effect on the object is being profiled. Næss (2004) explicitly invokes marked-
ness principles in explaining this connection. She takes the main property of the St
to be the Controller of the event, and the main property of the O to be Affectedness.

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Within an accusative case marking system affectedness is the marked property, and
within an ergative case marking system control is the marked property (Næss 2004:
1208). Since an imperfective event cannot be described in terms of its result state, it
must be described in terms of its initiation by a controller, thus it takes an accusative
alignment (Næss 2004: 1209).

Hopper and Thompson (1980)’s explanation fits the Nepali data better. The pat-
tern is attributed to the inherent meaning of the ergative as a marker of transitivity
(i.e. as an effector and/or agentive) rather than attributing it to markedness as de-
viation from a prototype. It strikes me as counter-intuitive that the ergative should
be associated with control and volition and therefore be relegated to event structures
in which the object and result state are profiled. Furthermore, the other explana-
tions require that the ergative profile the initiation of the event, whereas the effector
analysis specifically excludes the initiation of the event (and includes its completion).

The passive-to-ergative grammaticalization pathway described in Croft (2012:

255-57) is useful for this discussion. The passive voice is characterized by “the de-
profiling of the causal segment from agent (initiator) to patient (endpoint)” (Croft
2012: 256). The grammaticalization pathway consists of the gradual restoration of
that causal segment. Initially there is a passive form without an overt agent, and
then this agent is reintroduced as a marked antecedent oblique (often an instrumen-
tal). At this point the causal chain is not profiled, but rather the result state. The
process of reanalyzing the passive as an ergative consists of reinterpreting the oblique
as an ergative agent and profiling the entire causal chain. This is accompanied by
a shift in the usual highest-topicality discourse role: with passives it is the O, and
with ergative it is the St . Croft notes that this “is also represented as the profiling of
the agent subevent and thus its force-dynamic relationship to the patient subevent”
(Croft 2012: 257). Thus the ergative profiles the entire causal chain rather than just
the result state.

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 Regardless of the scenario we accept, in Nepali we find that ergative case is oblig-
atory in perfective transitive clauses and variable elsewhere.

This is operationalized as an opposition between nominative and ergative case

in transitive clauses (diagrammed above by the entailed presence of both a subject
and object). Ergative marking may be found in both perfective and imperfective
clauses, so there are no extra entailments. Nominative marking, however, entails the
presence of imperfective aspect. This follows the Transitivity Hypothesis, because a
marker of low transitivity (nominative case) is associated with another marker of low
transitivity (verbal morphology with imperfective aspect).

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Chapter 7

Conclusions

Nepali presents with a complex case marking pattern in which ergative case is oblig-
atory in perfective transitive clauses, disallowed in intransitive clauses and copular
clauses, and varies with the nominative elsewhere. Where ergative marking is variable,
its usage correlates with properties of the Event, properties of the Subject, properties
of the Object, and properties of the Discourse.

The study of pragmatic phenomena require the implementation of multiple strate-

gies for collecting language data. The data for this investigation come from four con-
verging lines of inquiry: descriptions of the Nepali pattern in the literature, targeted
elicitations with native speakers, the implementation of a grammaticality judgment
survey, and the analysis of a sample of the Nepali National Spoken Corpus.

I found ergative marking to be obligatory in perfective main clauses and variable

in subordinate clauses. What appears to be active marking in intransitive clauses
is analyzed as ergative marking in transitive clauses with covert objects. The only
categorical split is the distinction between perfective and non-perfective verb forms.
Every other association was found to be non-categorical.

These non-categorical associations include a positive correlation between subjects

with inanimate reference and the expression of ergativity in common nouns, and a

300
negative correlation between first person pronouns and ergativity in the pronominal
domain. This follows expected patterns of marking based on the types which are
most frequent in discourse. Ergative marking is somewhat associated with highly
individuated objects, but not with affected objects.

Ergative marking is positively associated with characterizing or individual-level

predicates, kind readings, categorical propositions, and strong construals of quan-
tifiers. There was no correlation found between ergative marking and agency or
volitionality.

The main claim of this analysis is that the Nepali ergative marks an effector of the
event described by the clause. This term refers to a participant which is implicated in
enacting and effecting the event, but is not necessarily its main controller or instigator.
As a component of the ergative case marking system, it has a pragmatic usage,
implicating the subject as a participant in a prototypically transitive event. Aspects
of this analysis contribute to the general theory of Optional Ergative Marking and its
relation to argument proto-roles. Associations between the ergative and prototypical
properties of a transitive event arise from the meaning of the ergative marker as
an effector. This analysis also provides a straightforward explanation for the lack
of volitional correlations in Nepali that we find in other languages with variable
ergativity.

The other semantic and pragmatic features are associated with discourse promi-
nence. These include the correlation with categorical propositions and characterizing
predicates. Here the associations are attributable to general principles of semantic
markedness. Variable ergativity represents the presence of pragmatic implicatures of
various strengths. Gradient markedness oppositions can lead to the conventionaliza-
tion of these associations into semantic entailments. This is demonstrated for English
gender marking, the association between ergative marking and semantic properties
of the transitive subject in Nepali, and the association between ergative marking and

301
Nepali perfective verb forms.
These conclusions present several possible avenues for future research. The first
would simply involve the expansion of the data set by analyzing a larger portion of
the NNSP and conducting more grammaticality judgment surveys on a larger pool
speakers, which could be disseminated through an online marketplace. In this way,
it would be possible to obtain enough data to make more confident statements about
the comparative strength of various feature correlations. It would also illuminate
the ways that this system varies alongside other kinds of dialectal variation. One
particular point of interest would be to examine particular variants of this system
and see if they correlate with properties of the speaker’s L1 or parents’ L1.
In that same vein, a major unanswered question on the problem is the extent to
which Nepali variable ergativity arises from language contact with other languages of
Nepal. Depending upon when variable ergativity first entered the system, we might
expect Magar or Newari to have had a greater impact on the language. It would be
helpful to use the same approach described here to analyze languages which have had
a long history of contact with Nepali.
Finally, it would be useful to compare the Nepali system in depth to as many
languages with variable ergativity as possible to uncover other patterns in the asso-
ciations between argument realization and semantic/pragmatic features.

302
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