We finally get to dive into the world of split ergativity, where past-tense transitive verbs point to the agent of the action (which is not always the subject). This is a common feature among the Indo-Iranian languages. However, Persian and several other Iranian languages have normalized the subject-verb relationship familiar to western mIE languages.
A three-way split.
Split 1: Of the Iranian languages, Sorani alone has overt indefinite and definite (postposed) articles.
Sorani Kičêk kitêbeke-y kirî. [girl+a book+the+PRO] bought] ‘A girl bought the book.’
The suffix -y is the pronoun indicator ‘she’ (in this case) marking the subject as the agent. In the Sorani version of ergativity, the agent is not declined, since Sorani has no cases per se. Instead, it is in its unmarked (dictionary) form.
Split 2: Kurmanji and Persian indicate indefiniteness but do not have distinct definite articles. Definiteness is understood from context.
Kurmanji Keçikê pirtûk1 kirî. [ girl+a+OBL book bought]
Persian Dokhtar-i2 ketāb-rā kharid. [girl+a book+OBJ bought]
1Definiteness here is understood from earlier context. Note that ‘girl’ is in the oblique (i.e., not subject) case. A more literal approximation of this ergative structure might be ‘By (means of) a girl the book was bought.’ The verb agrees with the object: ‘book’.
2The -i is the indefinite suffix. Persian speakers also use the numeral yek ‘one/a’ to indicate indefinitenes, as well as nothing at all: ketāb-e xub [book+ezafe good] ‘a good book’. The -rā is the direct object suffix. This could be ‘a book’ or ‘the book’ depending on context. (Persian dokhtar also means ‘daughter’, a great cognate with English daughter.)
Split 3: Pashto indicates definiteness strictly by context while the default is indefinite. In addition, Pashto yaw ‘one’ / yawa ‘one’ (feminine) is also used to indicate indefinite ‘a/an’, as in this example.
Pashto Yawə jənəy1 kitāb wākhist. [one+OBL girl+OBL book bought]
1The word for ‘girl’ in Pashto does not change in the oblique but ergativity can be seen in the ending on the determiner numeral. The verb agrees with the logical direct object: kitāb ‘book’.
Being indefinite about ‘some’.
Speakers of Sorani and Persian have the unique ability to express indefiniteness of plural nouns by means of an article (Sorani) or simply an indefinite marker (Persian) added to the plural ending. We have been searching for something like this since the beginning of our discussion of articles. In English it would be similar to saying something like ‘An apples are on the table.’ Instead, English deploys the determiner ‘some’. Sorani and Persian are unique among the mIE language in having this facility.
Sorani Sêwānêk le ser mêz in. [apples+a on surface table are] ‘Some apples are on the table.’
Persian Sibhāyi ru-ye miz hastand. [apples+INDEF on table are]
Sorani is not the new French.
Sorani nouns attach the definite article with possessive adjectives but not with possessive pronouns. We find the exact opposite behavior in the Romance languages.
Sorani eme kitêbeke-y1 mine. [this book+the+EZAFE my+is] ‘This is my book.’
Sorani ewe hî to-ye. [that yours is] ‘That is yours.’
French C’est mon livre. [this+is my book]
French Celui-là est le tien. [that is the yours]
1 Ezafe is a letter/sound which serves to connect a determiner and a noun or two nouns. (More on ezafe in a future post.)
A wordreference user asked if ezafe could be seen as an indefinite article in Persian. A native speaker of Persian (Farsi) replied, “ee-zah-fee (pronounced like that) means “extra” in Farsi. Thus, I don’t think it makes much sense to say “ee-zah-fee” when referring to definite/indefinite suffixes. First off, Farsi has no definite or indefinite articles. There are certain ways that it can be implied, but there is no actual article. You can’t say ‘a book’ in Farsi. You can say yug kitob, but that means ‘one book’. You can’t say ‘the book’ either. You can say u kitob, but that means ‘that book’.” He then makes an important point, namely, that in/definiteness may be expressed simply by the setting and circumstances of speech: “Sometimes ‘a’ or ‘the’ can be implied when saying something, kulum dari? ‘Do you have a pen?’, or túsha darido ‘you have the marker’.” https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/persian-definite-indefinite-articles.139032/
GRAMMAR
Agreement occurs between two words in a sentence or phrase. Some of the grammatical features of one word (usually a noun) are repeated in another word. For example, if a noun is plural then words modifying the noun will also have plural inflection, thus making obvious which noun is being modified, even if the noun isn’t nearby. Verbs also agree (suggesting at some level that verbs are modifiers also): Thosepl bookspl arepl interesting. (In some languages even ‘interesting’ in that sentence would be marked plural.) Sometimes the agreement is obvious in the repetition of endings, as Russian kniga byla ‘a book was’.
Decline refers to the alternation of endings on words depending on their function in the sentence. A set of endings is referred to as a “declension”. For example Latin’s “first declension” refers to how the set endings that a large corpus of feminine words take in order to define their role in a sentence (subject, direct object, object of a preposition, etc.).
Determiner is a word that normally precedes a noun or noun phrase that modifies it in some way without significantly changing its meaning. Articles, demonstrative and possesive pronouns and quantifiers (like some, many) are determiners. Adjectives, which alter the meaning of the noun significantly, are not determiners.
Ergativity refers to a grammatical relationship where a transitive verb agrees with the agent of the action which is usually the direct object of the sentence. The word derives from a classical Greek word meaning ‘to work’. The agent is the what does the work expressed by the verb. In most languages the subject is marked by an oblique case ending and the agent is in its non-marked form (dictionary form or nominative case). The closest English equivalent would be something like a passive sentence: The book was bought by a girl. Only in an ergative sentence the subject would still be ‘girl’ and object would still be ‘book’
What do you think?