Pathways of the development of the ergative in Central Tibetan

Abstract

Within the Bodic branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family, a wide range of "ergative" marking patterns is found. These patterns range from the occurrence of the ergative only with transitive verbs, as in Chepang (Hale and Watters 1973) to the person and number split pattern, as in Kham (Hale and Watters 1973). In Bodic as well as elsewhere in Tibeto-Burman (cf. Chelllah 1987 for Meithei), the ergative may even be reanalyzed as some sort of topic marker.