A Typological Approach To Alignment Of Case Marking

Case is a kind of grammatical category.Different languages can choose different types of case marking alignments which reflect the different cognitive ways.In the study of case,the ergative-absolutive case alignment and the case split are the focuses of Chinese and foreign scholars recently.Because of the different types of the case marking,languages in the world present different case marking alignments.Scholars in the past most discussed the overt case marking from the perspective of the morphology,including the markers on the verbs and nouns,while the generalized markers did not attract enough attention.The related researches in Chinese are mainly about whether the Chinese is an ergative-absolutive language or not,and the study of the ergative phenomenon in English has not been deeply discussed.From the perspective of the linguistic typology,we discuss how to identify the ergative verbs in both Mandarin English and Chinese and select the specific verbs in the thesis.Through that,the ergative phenomenon can be shown.From the perspective of typology,we discuss the ergative constructions in Mandarin Chinese and English and analyze the relation to the similar constructions.In this way,we can explore the similarities and differences between Mandarin Chinese and English ergative constructions.In this thesis,we introduce the types of case marking alignments of human languages which are logically passible at first.Then we illustrate the motivations and manifestations of the case-split for world languages.And starting with the reclassification of verbs,we make clear the definition of the ergative verbs,and establish a set of criterions determining ergative verbs which can fit both Mandarin Chinese and English.Finally,we explore the similarity and difference of the ergative construction in Mandarin Chinese and English,and we also compare it with the passive sentence and middle sentence to make the characteristics of them more obvious.The findings that we have found are listed below:1)From the perspective of typology,languages in the world can be divided into five types of case marking alignments logically.The imbalance of the distribution of these case-marking alignments can be explained by the principle of“relational visibility”and“relational economy”.Especially,the“pure”active-stative case alignment is just an ideal form as we mentioned above as it may be on the stage of transition.From the perspective of the morphology,Mandarin Chinese belongs to the neutral alignment type.2)The possibility of case split being a universal linguistic phenomenon lies in the fact that the motivations for the case split are from different aspects?the semantic nature of the nominals,the sematic nature of the verbs,tense/aspect/mood/voice,clause types,etc.?3)On the naming of“ergative”,??zuoge in Mandarin Chinese has often been used in the previous researches which is inappropriate from our views.We name it as??shige as it can directly reflect the nature of its“agentivity”.4)On the classification of verbs,the previous definition of the“ergative verb”is actually the“absolutive verb”.And we think the classification of verbs and the description of ergative verbs of Jin?2014?are not proper,because the ergative verbs should be used as both transitive verbs and intransitive verbs,not just the transitive verbs.In this thesis,the ergative verbs refer to ones which can enter into the ergative construction.5)Based on Zeng's?2009?determination of the ergative verbs in mandarin Chinese and Levin&Rappaport's?1995?lexical conceptual structures,we make four criterions for determining the ergative verbs which can be summarized as:the transition from“NP₁+V+NP₂”to“NP₂+V”,causation,state changing and spontaneously behaving.These four criterions can both fit Mandarin Chinese and English,but there are differences in the conditions to satisfy.For Mandarin Chinese,the first one and third one are mandatory,the other two are optional.But the ergative verb must meet at least three criterions.And for the ergative verbs in English,we believe that the first one and the third one are mandatory for verbs to be ergative,and the other two are not.Based on the characteristics of the ergative verbs and the choosing of the subjects,we can define the type of the Mandarin Chinese and English as the“fluid-S”languages.6)As a means of case marking,the word order mainly reflects the relationship between the agent and patient.And for case marking,the word order and few function words,content words and suffixes are the instruments in Mandarin Chinese.In English,the instruments are the word order and overt inflectional pronouns.It's worth noting that in the change of word order in the sentences,the nominals'semantic roles still remain.The relation between the freedom of the word order and the richness of the case marking can also give us the theoretical support.7)In Mandarin Chinese and English,the ergative construction refers to a transformational pattern.In this process,the patient of the transitive sentence moves to the position of the agent of the intransitive sentence,and the valence of the verb changes.The difference is that the individual time/tense marker can appear in the ergative construction of mandarin Chinese,but it cannot appear in the English.Through the comparison with the passive sentence and the middle sentence,we find the ergative construction in Mandarin Chinese and English has the following characteristics.For the ergative construction in mandarin Chinese,there is no implied agent in the ergative intransitive sentence and cannot be led out with?bei‘by'.The verbs in the construction can be modified by reflexive pronouns.The construction can appear in the past tense and the perfective aspect.For the ergative construction in English,it is a syntactic operation.Only one event occurs,and there is no agent which is presupposed.The event can happen at a particular time ant it can also appear in the progressive aspect.The adverbs often precede the verb.In this thesis,the enumeration of the types of case marking alignments and the motivations of the case split reflects the possible situation which one language would be.It also provides a new angle for the study of the subject system in English and Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of ergativity.We also discuss deeply of the ergative verbs and the ergative constructions which are the focuses of the linguists recently.The solution of these problems can also provide the reference for teaching and cognition researches.