On The Continuum Analysis About Split-Ergativity Patterns

The way in which a language selects accusative alignment or ergative alignment, is actually to some extent a reflection of different perspectives of the natives in observing the world. The research of ergative would be difficult if not related to the phenomena of split-ergative, because the ergative languages often display some split features in different degrees and levels. The thesis attempts to investigate the split-ergative of many languages in the world in the perspective of linguistic typology, to establish a continuum on split-ergativity patterns, and intends to make some functional explanations of these patterns.The thesis consists of five chapters:The first chapter briefly introduced the definition of the ergative and the distribution of global ergative languages, and then summarize the literatures on ergative languages home and abroad. The second chapter analyses several alignments on case marking, especially on accusative alignment and ergative alignment. The third chapter which is the main portion of the paper, try to establish a continuum about split-ergativity patterns, on the basis of classifying the split-ergative into three types:grade split, tense/aspect split and subject split. The remaining work of the dissertation is in the fourth chapter which aims to explain the change on the alignments of case marking, and link ergativity to the Sino-Tibetan languages. The fifth part is the summary of the full dissertation.