The present paper seeks to propose a justified scenario for the evolution of the patterns of showing non-accusative Alignment in Hamwrami in terms of Constructionalization. Drawing on purely synchronic features of the marked construction like the pattern of subject marking and also embarking upon the general patterns of Alignment changes in Iranian Languages, it is argued that marked construction in Hawrami is in fact created out of another type of construction with a different schema. The increasing use of the clitics as the marker of transitive subject, which is one of the hallmarks of non-accusative Alignment in most of the new Iranian Languages, is assumed to be the enabling factor of the constructionalization of marked non-accusative construction in Hawrami.

This paper is an attempt to analyze the Ergative constructions in Hawrami. Like other Kurdish dialects, Hawrami utilizes split ergativity only in the aorist constructions. Along with the process of Clitic Doubling, this dialect uses another mechanism for manifesting the Ergative pattern. This rare mechanism is only found in Hawrami and not elsewhere in Kurdish. In the constructions, which are derived according to the second mechanism, the direct object and the subject undergo the processes of toplicalization and focusing, respectively. Hence, comparing to the other Ergative constructions, which are derived on the basis of Clitic Doubling, these specific constructions bear a more marked semantic interpretation. The constituents of these marked Ergative constructions follow a rigid order: the direct object appears at the beginning, the subject, which is always accompanied by Oblique case marker, gets the second position, and the final position is occupied by the past transitive verb. Making any slight change in this order would result in the ungrammaticality of the construction. The present paper, on the one hand, tries to describe the main characteristics of both marked and unmarked Ergative constructions in Hawrami, and seeks to provide a theoretical account for the derivation of marked Ergative constructions and their characteristics on the other. The proposed account is mainly based on the theoretical apparatus of Minimalist Program, especially the recently introduced notions of Split CP Hypothesis, Focus Phrase, and Topic Phrase.

Tati Dialect of Khalkhal is one of the Iranian North western dialects spoken in shahrood and Xorsh-rostam districts of Khalkhal. Since this dialect has various accents and variants, in this Paper, kajali accent form Xorsh-rostam, and lordi , karini , dәravi , kehali , gilvani form Shahrood are selected to be compared with respect to their Ergative characteristics. In the article, at first nominative and accusative cases of nouns and pronouns are described, then, through various examples, the place of pronoun affixes in the construction of some sentences possessing Ergative characteristics are indicated, and finally Ergative case is described on the basis of its six different forms. Tati Dialect of Khalkhal is distinguished from other dialects producing Ergative structures, because of the adherence of verb to semantic object, in number, person and specially in gender. Meanwhile, according to some evidence in this dialect, apart from past transitive verbs, some intransitive verbs are influenced by the Ergative structure.

Tatic-type languages are among west Iranian languages divided into four main groups: northern Tatic, central Tatic, southern Tatic and Taleshi group (Stilo, 1981, p. 139). Among these languages, we focused on three southern Tatic languages namely Chali, Taleshi (Anbarani) and Vafsi. Theses Tatic languages present the most complex kind of split Alignments and this phenomenon follows the universal tendency seen in tense/aspectual split Ergative Alignments in which the Ergative Alignment only appears in a specific tense/aspect generally past/perfect tense. In these Tatic languages, the oblique subject only appears in past transitive clauses where in there is no verbal agreement, but in other environments, the subject is direct and the verb agrees with direct subjects: In present tense sentences, the subject is direct and the verb shows full agreement with the subject. In contrast, in past tense sentences the subject of intransitive clause is direct and the verb shows full agreement with the direct subject. In transitive clauses, the subject bears marked case oblique and the agreement in the verb would be default 3s. In all three languages, a pronominal mobile clitic optionally cross-references the subject. The split Ergative Alignment of these Tatic languages is of potential theoretical interest mainly for two reasons. First: In one of the most influential views in the current literature on ergativity, Ergative case is an inherent case (Nash, 1996, 2015; Woolford, 1997, 2006; Aldrige, 2004, 2008, 2012; Laka, 2006; Anand & Nevins, 2006; Legate, 2006, 2008, 2012; and Massam, 2006). On this view, Ergative case is attributed to the lexical properties of the agentive v head and theta marks the subject, not to the subject’ s surface structural position or to the agreement with non-theta marking heads (Baker 2015, p. 54). In other words, the main assumption for considering Ergative as a kind of inherent case is the relationship between agent theta role and Ergative case and in languages that Ergative is inherent case, we should see a close correspondence between agent theta role and Ergative subjects and also the presence of active Alignment. However, it does not seem right for Tatic languages since what thematic roles an NP has is not a primary determinant of its case in these languages; all past transitive subjects are marked oblique regardless of their theta roles and no active Alignment can be seen in these languages. Additionally, the restrictedness of the appearance of Ergative/oblique case in past transitive sentences suggests that it is a kind of structural case and should be accounted for by an structural case mechanism. Secondly, the split Ergative Alignment in these Tatic languages is different from other aspectual split Alignments in spite of the fact that the restriction of Ergative to past transitive clauses conforms to the well-known universal tendency in this regard. But in these languages, it is not aspect that conditions splitness. So generally, it can be argued that these Tatic languages cannot be classified as aspectual based Ergative languages and none of the analytical studies (Laka, 2006; Coon & Preminger, 2014; Nash, 2015; Ura, 2006; Baker, 2015) which derive their analyses based on aspect can account for these Tatic languages. As it can be seen, none of the analyses proposed so far can be readily used for explaining split Ergative Alignment in these Tatic languages. Thus, the following questions and hypotheses are addressed here: 1-What is the source of Ergative case on past transitive subjects? 2-What is the source of direct case on present transitive subjects and intransitive ones? In an alternative view (Baker, 2015), Ergative case is a structural case. Baker (2010, 2015) believes that the inherent view of Ergative case has advantages for non-strict Ergative languages like Hindi and Georgian and he tentatively accepts it for those languages; however, he argues that in stricter Ergative languages, Ergative is a structural case not an inherent one (see Baker 2015, p. 54 for more discussion). In this regard, he invokes the idea that in addition to the agreement-based theory of case (Agree), case can be assigned by a rule of dependent case assignment in the sense of Marantz (1991). He also invokes the possibility that one language may use a combination of case assigning mechanisms; that is to say, both Agree and Marantzian ones. We have adopted Baker’ s (2014) argument regarding the conditioning factor in splitness in Kurmanji and claim that the fundamental difference between clauses with past and present verb stems, which drives the split Ergative pattern in these Tatic languages, is in the phrasal status of the v node. We claim that subject direct case is related to agreement on T in the familiar way, but oblique case on past transitive subjects is not related to agreement with a functional head and instead, we claim that the rule for oblique case assignment can be formalized in terms of a dependent rule.

For the Western Iranian languages the transition from the Old Iranian to the Middle-Iranian period is characterized by – among other things – the loss of word-final syllables. This loss had a far-reaching impact on the nominal and verbal systems since it caused the loss of categories which had been expressed by suffixes. The consequences include the emergence of the so-called Ergative system. Although descriptions of the Ergative construction in Balochi do exist, there is no treatment yet which takes into account the material of the different dialects. Furthermore, the Ergative construction in Balochi has been compared with data from Old Iranian, but not with data from Middle Iranian languages, and the development from the Middle Iranian stage to the different types found in present-day Balochi has also not yet been studied. The aim of this paper is therefore to present the data from the Balochi dialects as far as they are known today and to update, complete (and in some points, correct) previous descriptions of the matter.

Accounting for the verbal agreement and its interaction with case marking in both accusative and Ergative Alignments have always been an interesting line of investigation in generative syntax. Two main approaches have been proposed in this regard within the general framework of Minimalism. The first one, referred to as the classic approach in the available literature, envisages agreement as a parallel mechanism with case marking, taking place in narrow syntax. The second approach, generally known as dependent case-marking approach, not only separates agreement from case marking, but also analyzes it as a two-step phenomenon being unfolded both in narrow syntax, through Agree-Link, and PF, through Agree-Copy. Employing the theoretical apparatus of the dependent case-marking approach, the present paper seeks to study the patterns of verbal agreement in Ergative constructions in Hawrami. The explanatory adequacy of this very approach is specifically observed in the theoretical analysis of a special type of Ergative constructions in which the direct object takes the form of a possessive NP. The manner through which the possessor of the direct object is overtly manifested in these Ergative constructions can determine the outcome of the verbal agreement: if the possessor is expressed via person-marker clitics, the verb agrees in person and number with the possessor, however, if the possessor is realized as an overt NP, the verb agrees with the possessed element. With the intention of analyzing this pattern, it is argued that in both cases the potential targets which the head of T, and consequently the main verb, can agree with are determined in narrow syntax, through Agree-Link while the ultimate form of the agreement affix is determined post-syntactically via Agree-Copy. More specifically, we maintain that Agree-Copy has a direct access to the internal structure of potential targets, and this very fact plays a vital role in determination of agreement patterns.

This research is designed to produce detailed descriptions of the morphological ergativity in three South Asian languages. The chosen sample includes Hindi/Urdu, Pashto and Balochi, as morphologically enough to achieve the goals and generalizations of the research. The study presents the range of variation in case and agreement marking in these South Asian descendants of the common Indo-Iranian language, in which the distinct systems of Ergative case marking and agreement is to be compared, both within the nominal and verbal domain. While these individual languages are common examples of morphological ergativity, the range of variation among these languages has not been examined comparatively. The goals of this research are twofold. After a comprehensive overview, we present a detailed typology of Ergative marking and agreement in the predetermined languages, demonstrating their common split Ergative behavior. This process is manifested in two distinct strategies of markedness: Differential Case Marking (DCM) [including Differential Subject Marking (DSM), as well as Differential Object Marking (DOM); Aissen 1999] in the nominal domain, and marked agreement in the verbal domain; which is considered within a comparative account.It will be seen that the Ergative marking and agreement patterns are not uniform across these languages. The overt morphological expression of case marking occurs of varying degrees in their nominal paradigms, while in the verbal paradigm the ways in which agreement morphology cross references arguments illustrates the common default agreement with the nominative argument in all three systems. The study proceeds as follows. First the range of variation in case and subject (SI) marking in the sample will be presented, together with an overview of morphological ergativity. Following this, the typological splits, indicating the strategies of markedness and the variation in case marking splits (DCM), including both differential subject marking (DSM) and differential object marking (DOM), will be examined through the study. The effect of differential object marking (DOM) on verb agreement is considered next; and finally, a summary of the typology of variation in the domain of the study will be presented. Noteworthy is that the achieved comparative patterns can be considered as representatives of languages in the Indo-Iranian family.

The present paper with the aim of a systematic study of Behdini dialect of Yazd, examined the Alignment in this remaining dialect as one of the central dialects of Iran. The research data were collected though the field study and semistructured interviews and the sentences were extracted in the natural context of the speakers. Following the transcriptions of interviews with 21-to 70-year-old, a corpus of around 8500 sentences was collected and analyzed. All extracted sentences were examined in terms of Alignment. In this method, various types of sentences were classified based on the tense, transitivity, and structures. The manifestation of the syntactic relationship between verb and noun groups of the sentences were also studied. The findings of the study suggested that Behdini dialect followed the split Ergative Alignment which was sensitive to tense/aspect. In present tense sentences, the subject was direct and the verb showed full agreement with the subject. In contrast, in past tense sentences, the subject of transitive clauses beard no marker, the agreement in the verb would be Past tense or Past participle of main verb and, a prefix beard the agreement and was added to the verb. Interestingly a double code of prefixes was witnessed in this dialect, where a set of prefixes for singular and plural NPs were distinguishable in past simple and the other forms of past tenses.

In Koohmare Sorkhi dialect, Ergative constructions can be viewed in terms of recent phase theory and bare phrase syntax in generative view. Koohmare Sorkhi includes canonical forms such as “om goft” in which a clitics is added to the left part of the verb in past accusative constructions. The production of this form and other similar forms can be justified in the framework of phase theory as well as incorporation. In this dialect, V is considered as phase head and T shows both V features and T features. V feature causes movement of V into T. In the next stage, incorporation works after post syntactic operation and the deleting features occur before reaching interfaces. Clitics are bundles of features, and V attracts them as phase head. The mechanism for incorporation is adjunction, and the label of clitics should not be distinct to which it is incorporated. Incorporation and movement have been viewed in the framework of bare phrase structure. Movement to T is syntactic movement and after that incorporation combines past form with clitics in logical form to produce the final form. This operation has been viewed in several languages. Introducing vPs as phases in Ergative constructions can be a solution to their contrast in this structure with other structures.

The present research accounts for the characteristic patterns of ergativity within the central dialect of Talishi language as one of the most important modern endangered North-Western Iranian languages. Talishi includes three main dialects as follows: Northern, Central and Southern dialects, which are divided according to the geographical area of their usage. The only dialect in which ergativity is preserved is the central one. Due to the crucial role of case and case marking studies in linguistic analyses, the present research is focused on the central dialect to be able to present a scientific analysis of the Ergative data within the domain of active simple and compound transitive sentences. The analysis also demonstrates the agreement patterns in transitive and intransitive verbs, as well as the realization of case marking in the system under investigation according to Dixon’s criteria.