ergative, as it is still the marked form within the case opposition. Second, the origin of a marked nominative within a marked-nominative system could be similar to the origin of the ergative as in scenario II. As has been shown in Sec-tion 8, within the Nilotic languages it is possible that the marked nominative goes back to a former agent participant of a passive clause. he same holds for the development of the ergative in scenario II above. Plank’s scenarios are therefore of relevance for marked-nominative languages as well, even if lack of appropriate data does not allow for any more concrete generalizations.
Proto-Berber. Marked nominative is a later development, possibly out of an old definite particle.
he present paper is a first attempt to give an overview of marked-nomi-native languages. In future research it would be helpful to compare the Afri-can type of marked-nominative languages with the few marked-nominative languages found elsewhere in the world. In particular, the following questions are of interest: First, is the profile of the accusative found in African marked nominative languages similar to the profile of the accusative found elsewhere in marked-nominative languages? And second, are scenarios concerning the rise of marked-nominative languages applicable elsewhere in the world?
Further research could focus on the pragmatic aspects of marked-nomina-tive systems. Of special interest here is the question of whether topic functions are a possible source of marked-nominative case forms.
Abbreviations
A transitive subject function MNOM marked nominative
AA Afroasiatic N.PRED nominal predicate
A.DCL affirmative declarative NOM nominative
ACC 1 accusative NS Nilo-Saharan
2 accusative system O transitive object function
ABL ablative OBL oblique
ABS absolutive PASS passive
AGEN agentive PAST past
APL applicative PEE possessee
AM associative marker PER perfect
CAUS causative PFV perfective
CL1 first construct state PL plural
CON converb POR possessor
CONT continuation follows POSS possessive pronoun
COMP completive PROG progressive
COP copula PREP preposition
copulative PP peripheral participant
CS1 construction case 1 PVS preverbal selector
DEF definitizer REL relative pronoun
ERG 1 ergative S 1 intransitive subject function
2 ergative system 2 singular
F feminine SG singular
GEN genitive SA intransitive subject S is treated like
transitive subject A
GOAL goal SO intransitive subject S is treated like transitive object O
HEC Highland East Cushitic V verb
IMP impersonal Vi verbinitial
INST instrumental Vm verbmedial
IPV imperfective Vf verbfinal
IO indirect object VOC vocative
L/I locative/instrumental 1 first person
LINK linker 2 second person
M masculine 3 third person
Notes
* I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Sasha Aikhenvald, Felix Ameka, Azeb Amha, Matthias Brenzinger, Mike Bryant, Ulrike Claudi, Bernard Comrie, Joachim Crass, Denis Creissels, Gerrit Dimmendaal, Bob Dixon, Karen Ebert, Carola Emkow, Nick Evans, Monika Feinen, Orin Gensler, Tom Givón, Lenore Grenoble, Tom Güldemann, John Haiman, Bernd Heine, Roland Kießling, Christa Kilian-Hatz, Dennis Knoblauch, Maarten Kossmann, Tania Kouteva, Mechthild Reh, Hans-Jürgen Sasse, hilo Schadeberg, Gertrud Schneider-Blum, Helga Schröder, Anne Storch, Kyun-An Song, Yvonne Treis, Erhard Voeltz, Lindsay Whaley, Hirut Woldemariam, Zelealem Leyew, and last but not least to two anonymous reviewers. he project has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschat (DFG) to whom I extend my gratitude.
. Different uses of the term nominative will be discussed under 1.2.
2. As Dixon points out “if any case has zero realization it will be nominative” (Dixon 1994:62).
3. An anonymous reviewer has observed that the term “derived case form” might not be felicitous.
4. Unfortunately most languages listed there have a question mark, and it does not become entirely clear what this means with reference to the information provided.
5. “Unlike in its common usage the term Absolutive here does not imply morphological unmarkedness. As we will show in the coming section, the Absolutive is characterized by a special morphological signal that paradigmatically contrasts with the Nominative and Geni-tive.” (Woldemariam 2003:64)
6. “he Maasai construction is not nominative, and, faute de mieux, I will call it ergative in the rest of the paper” (Mel’čuk 1997:141).
7. Attributive clauses — when the nominal predicate is non-specific.
8. An anonymous reviewer has criticized my interpretation of the construction presented in 3a, claiming that what I call nominal predicate is rather an O due to the fact that the cop-ula is simply a transitive verb. In clauses without a copcop-ula one cannot argue that the nominal predicate has the status of O as there is no element which could function as a verb.
9. he associative marker (AM) has a wide range of functions. It introduces relative clauses, stands before verbs expressing properties, such as verbs with an adjectival semantics (Randal calls them verb (property)), is used in one type of nominal possession. Randal suggests that the main function of the AM is to connect a nominal participant and a clausal one, which always has a verbal core. According to Randal this also holds true for nominal possession by paraphrasing the genitive construction given in 5a as ‘I cut the head, the fish’s one.’
0. Tucker and Mpaayei treat only the Maasai dialect of Maa.
. “ATR” stands for advanced tongue root position. [+ATR] indicates an advanced tongue root, [-ATR] indicates a retreated tongue root. [+ATR] corresponds to close and [-ATR] to open vowels in languages with an open/close vowel distinction (see Ladefoged 1964:36–40;
Tucker & Bryan 1966).
2. Note that the genitive particle is gender- and number-inflected. It consists of two parts.
he first part is inflected for possessee, the second for possessor.
GEN-particle: l-f¢ M.PEE-M.SG.POR l-7¢ M.PEE-F.SG.POR l-ff¢ M.PEE-PL.POR
3. Note that t7 undergoes all kinds of vowel assimilations.
4. Following Dixon, passive will be defined as follows: (i) Passive applies to an underlying-ly transitive clause and forms a derived intransitive clause. (ii) he underunderlying-lying O becomes S of the passive sentence. (iii) he underlying A is omitted, although there is always the op-tion of including it. (iv) he passive is formally marked, generally by a verbal affix (Dixon 1994:146). Note that the languages mentioned vary with regard to the degree they conform to the above definition. In some languages the expression of agent is not possible, i.e. there is a so called ‘agentless passive’.
5. Kießling had collected data himself on the Gisamjanga variety. Most data Kießling uses are from Paul Berger, collected from 1935 to 1936. I am very grateful to Roland Kießling for allowing me to use his data.
6. his view is in contrast to what has been claimed before in the literature (cf. Rottland 1982:172, Creider and Rottland 1997:83).
7. “It seems as if only the heads of complex subject NPs are marked for the nominative, however none of the dependent constituents such as nominal posssessors, attributive adjec-tives, numerals and so on” (Kießling 2001:16)
8. Kießling (2001:19) uses the head non-subject instead. O may refer to the participant introduced by verbal derivation.
9. Kießling (2001:19) uses the symbol 0 instead.
20. Note that a similar split is found in Ik (Kuliak), an accusative-case language (see König 2002a).
2. Most examples of Kießling are without glosses; the latter are introduced by the present author.
22. Probably antelope (note of the present author).
23. Content in brackets is added by the present author.
24. Genitive is used with other cases in case doubling forms instead.
25. Square brackets indicate the phonetic form.
26. With the exception of imperatives, in Arbore all clauses appear with what Hayward refers to as a preverbal selector (PVS in short) which contains information about clause type, such as indicative, non-indicative, negative and the subject (S/A) by way of a bound pro-noun (see Hayward 1984:108f. & 247). In the Cushitic literature, analogous elements have been called ‘selector’ or ‘indicator particles’.
27. It means that before the verb, A, S, and O are always encoded identically, namely in the morphologically unmarked form.
28. Dimmendaal (1998:59 & 60) claims that Chai is better described as verb-second lan-guage, with the main orders: O V A and SV and *VS (but in the data presented by Last and Lucassen there are counterexamples to this claim).
29. he instrumental suffixes INST and LOC may as well be interpreted as postpositions.
30. 7¢rró-á-gà\ú consists of the noun 7¢rró in the accusative form, the copula á, and ‘my’, the possessor pronoun (the possessor pronoun shows number of possessor and possessed; see Last & Lucassen 1998:396- 397).
3. Note that the authors claim that S is encoded in ACC (ABS) also in an VS order; but their examples suggest something else.
32. a is a copula; see Last & Lucassen 1998:397. ‘he children are mine’ would appear in the same structure.
33. Note that the authors doubt whether Suri-Chai really has a case system; rather, they see an ergative pattern at work.
he authors claim that in an OVA order according to their data, A is also not marked in the nominative case; but this contradicts clause 26b, where A occurs in the nominative in an OVA order:
mòlkó>í 1ónè ájà\ màŋgísí. O V A
Moskovitch one give.PF.3.SG.O1SG government (< Mengistu)
he government had given one Moskovitch (= type of Russian gun) to me. (Last & Lu-cassen 1998:408).
34. ACC indefinite: final low = basic form; ACC definite: -ó; NOM indefinite: final high;
NOM definite -á ; DAT: -m, INST: -na, LOC1: -ídda, LOC2: -aa, LOC3: -ka, ABL: -ppa, VOC: -é, GEN: -ko.
35. It remains unclear what “BE” stands for.
36. Note that some nouns show no variation in nominative and accusative form.
37. he concept indirect object (IO) will be used for participants expressing the semantic role of beneficiary, recipient, or directional only if there is no head marking device necessary to introduce them.
38. In double case markings, different syntactic functions are marked on the same noun: a noun bears more than one case ending which has functionally the value of two cases. In con-trast, in case doubling the noun bears more than one case ending which functionally has the value of one case. An example for double case marking is the genitive in Kanuri (see 51).
39. It remains unclear whether this form really refers to “1p”, that is, to the first person plural.
40. hough not in the third person.
4. Despite what Dimmendaal claims (1983:132), namely that the nominative (called abso-lute by him) is used. My analysis is corroborated by Schröder (2002:37) who argues for the closely related language Toposa that S in passive clauses appears in the accusative.
42. A = aspect marker, V = verb elsewhere, here probably voice, even if not in Dimmendaal’s abbreviations.
43. Note that the nominative is called ergative by Andersen, as the same suffix functions as an ergative and a marked-nominative case suffix, respectively. In order to be more easily in-telligible, I changed the glosses here to nominative. Clauses presented in 57a and 57b belong to the so-called verb-initial clauses which follow a marked-nominative pattern. All clauses in Päri either belong to the so called “verb-initial” or “NP-initial” type in Andersen’s ter-minology. Each type is characterized by a number of traits, such as different case marking, different word order, different cross-reference. he terms do not always match the actual appearance of participants, as in 57a. See further in Section 8b and Andersen (2000).
44. It remains unclear what exactly the author cited means with “CONT” (which stands for
“continuation follows”). Presumably, the suffix is used in discourse where a further clause is going to follow.
45. Note that Andersen translates the active clause like a passive one.
46. Number indicates number of morphemes of the word.
47. Formerly known under the name Maräqo, the Amharic name for the people. Libido is the name by which the people designate themselves.
48. As mentioned above, Woldemariam uses the term absolutive instead of accusative. In order to be consistent, the original glosses have been changed here.
49. Called Bedauye by Tucker and Bryan. See also Castellino 1978:32.
50. “Wenn man einen Bedawi nach irgend einem nennwort fragt, so gibt er dasselbe stets in der objectsform an” (Reinisch 1893:44)
5. “Genau so verfährt das Bedauye, wenn das prädicat ein hauptwort ist, indem dasselbe stets in der objectsform steht” (Reinisch 1893:83).
52. “Der dativ unterscheidet sich formell in nichts von der in § 122 und 123 beschribenen bildung des accusativs” (Reinisch 1893:67).
53. First line stands for Tuareg in general, second line lists a few Tuareg dialects which be-have differently; see further in Section 8 Berber.
54. Classification according to Fleming 1976.
55. Anywa is put in parentheses as it is disputable whether Anywa has a case system (cf. Reh 1996). Traces of ergativity are definitely present with regard to constituent order and bound pronouns.
56. Proto-Afroasiatic is also mentioned in Plank (2005) as a being marked nominative, but other authors (e.g., Aikhenvald 1995) question this analysis.
57. Kalenjin is an exception. In the map it appears only once. In the genetic overview, four different subgroups are listed.
58. For a discussion on whether Bantu has marked-nominative languages or not, see König (forthcoming a).
59. he exclamation mark stands for a downstep.
60. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for having drawn my attention to this fact.
6. In the literature there is a discussion on whether Berber should be counted as one lan-guage or several. For our purpose this question is not essential. However, as Berber shows a complex behavior with regard to case, it is crucial to differentiate within Berber. I will follow Aikhenvald in speaking of “Berber languages”. he different languages listed above might either have the status of dialects or of distinct languages.
62. he information of Table 12 is taken from Aikhenvald (1990:113, 1995:42). Other Ber-berists do not follow Aikhenvald’s classification.
63. Vowel i- has changed to glide w- because of morphophonological rules.
64. Aikhenvald (1995) refers to split S by the term ‘split-ergative’.
65. According to Aikhenvald’s description (1995:61) it should be accusative; in her gloss there is however the nominative.
66. here is no information on whether these Tuareg dialects are split S or not: herefore they cannot be further classified.
67. “It confirms the reconstruction of a split-ergative pattern marked by cross-referencing for Proto-Afroasiatic, related to the semantics of predicates (S= O for stative, or nominal predicates, Sa=A for the rest” ; Aikhenvald 1995:53). Note that Aikhenvald uses the term split-ergative instead of split S.
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