Nikolaus Himmelmann: Beyond Ergativity Languages with multiple basic transitive constructions

Typological (and descriptive) discussions of grammatical relations as well as more formal accounts of argument realization generally assume that in every language there is a single basic transitive construction (expressing prototypical actions) which displays the typical morphosyntactic properties of a transitive construction in the language at hand. In this talk, the hypothesis will be advanced that this assumption – while well supported for a large number of languages – may in fact be wrong for those languages where symmetrical voice oppositions or “remapping inverses” (Zúñiga 2006) occur. The main example will be provided by the western Austronesian language Totoli, spoken on the Indonesian island Sulawesi. But some recently described South American languages will also be discussed briefly.

Zúñiga, Fernando, 2006, Deixis and alignment, Amsterdam: Benjamins