درباره ي خاستگاه ساخت كنايي

On the Rise of Ergativity

This paper presents ail attempt to investigate the origins of ergativity in Iranian languages, drawing upon diachronic and synchronic analyses. In doing so, we will trace the development of ergative structure back to Old and Middle Persian, wherein, we believe, lies the roots of ergativity. We will specifically show that the ergative structure present in the grammatical structure of some Iranian languages has evolved from a past participle construction, much akin to what we find in Old Persian. It will further be argued that the old past participle construction had imparted a resultative construal in Old Persian and, later, in the transition to Middle Persian, has assumed a simple past reading. The bottom-line of our analysis will be represented as our proposal regarding the nature of ergative verb, to the effect that an ergative verb, as presently conceived in Iranian languages, is semantically transitive, but syntactically intransitive.