Stative PIE

by C Ryan Moniz

original research· spring 2017
updated & published· harvest 2021

philology

Also simply called “accusative,” this alignment treats the lone subjects of intransitive verbs and the actor subjects of transitive verbs similarly, with a case called nominative – the case for the direct object of a transitive verb is likewise called the accusative case. Consider the following example from Japanese:

• INTRANSITIVE: neko ga tsuita • “The cat arrived”
• TRANSITIVE: neko ga maguro o tabeta • “The cat ate tuna”

The cat (neko) is followed by the nominative postposition (ga) both when it is the subject of an intransitive verb (tsuita ‘arrived’) and the actor of a transitive verb (tabeta ‘ate’), which also takes an accusative direct object (maguro o ‘tuna _ACC’).

Ergative-absolutive or “ergative” languages, treat the lone subject of an intransitive verb with the same case as the object of a transitive verb, called the absolute, while the actor of a transitive verb is in another case called the ergative. Below is an example from Classical Maya:

• INTRANSITIVE: xixok • “You_(plural) entered”
• TRANSITIVE: xixruchöp • “They took you_(plural)”

Here, the absolutive pronoun -ix- ‘you_(plural)’ is used both for the subject of intransitive verb x…ok ‘entered’ and for the direct object of the transitive verb x...chöp ‘took,’ which also has the ergative actor -ru- ‘they_(singular).’

This alignment, also called “stative,” features intransitive-verb-subjects which sometimes behave like the actors of transitive verbs (as in accusative languages), and at other times behave like the direct objects of transitive verbs (as in ergative languages). In some languages, whether an intransitive verb takes an actor-like subject (sometimes called an “active” verb) or an object-like subject (sometimes called a “stative” verb) is fixed and dependent on the specific verb in question — these languages are said to have split-S active-stative alignment. In other languages, whether an intransitive verb behaves “active”-ly or “stative”-ly is more flexible, sensitive to the particular nuance the speaker wishes to convey — these languages have fluid-S active-stative alignment; the nuance imparted by treating an intransitive subject in a particular way depends on the language, but most often it denotes volition on the part of the subject. Below is an example from North Halmahera, spoken in northeastern Indonesia:

• TRANSITIVE: tonidoto • “I_ERG teach you_ABS”
• INTRANSITIVE (active): totagi • “I_ERG am going”
• INTRANSITIVE (stative): nikiolo • “You_ABS are asleep”

In the first intransitive example, the subject to- ‘I_ERG’ is in the same case it had as the actor in the transitive sentence, indicating that it is more volitional in the action of -tagi ‘be going.’ Meanwhile, the subject ni- ‘you_ABS’ of the second intransitive verb -kiolo ‘be asleep’ is in the same case as the direct object in the transitive sentence, indicating that the verb is less active.

The conjugations which are traditionally called verbal aspects in older Indo-European languages are the Imperfective, the perfective (called “aorist”), and the “perfect,” which was actually more of a stative voice conjugation, rather than a true aspect. Additionally, the some of the oldest Indo-European languages had a middle or mediopassive voice in addition to the typical active and passive voices, and this middle voice bore some interesting similarities to the stative conjugations. In Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European language, there was also an imperfective conjugation called the -hi conjugation which similarly resembled both the middle voice and the statives of other Indo-European languages. The comparison between the singular forms of the Hittite -hi conjugation and these other forms are given below:

It is possible that this Hittite -hi conjugation, the middle voice conjugation, and the stative “aspect” endings all come from a single source in a stative voice in Proto-Indo-European.

Most of the early Indo-European languages have a 3-gender system of masculine nouns, feminine nouns, and neuter (usually inanimate) nouns. However, some^❦1Fortson 2004, p 103, 118 believe that the original state of Indo-European gender was that of Hittite, which had only animate and inanimate genders, and that the separation of the animate into masculine and feminine genders was influenced by the reanalysis of inanimate collective nouns as abstract singular feminine nouns^❦2 Mallory & Adams 2006, p 59; Luraghi 2009. There are relics of this original two-way split between animate (or “common”) and inanimate (or “neuter”) nouns even in ancient Greek and Latin, which has, for example, adjectives with this common :: neuter distinction:

• Latin ‘nimble’ • agilis :: agile
• Ancient Greek ‘clear’ • σαφής :: σαφές

A distinction of animate versus inanimate, which often places emphasis on the agency or non-agency of nouns, can be a hint that the grammar of the language at-large emphasizes the agency of its verbal arguments.

One feature of some stative languages is the lack of a dedicated verb for ‘to have,’ as they often choose to express possession with a different periphrastic construction. While many early Indo-European languages do have a verb for ‘to have,’ none of them appear to reconstruct to a shared source-verb ‘to have’ in Proto-Indo-European, suggesting that they developped independently in each language from a prior stage which lacked such a verb. However, early Indo-European languages do share a possessive verb construction which appears to be reconstructable — a periphrastic oblique-possessive construction which uses the copula ‘to be’ with the possessor in a different case (usually the dative or following a preposition). Here are examples translating “I have the book”:

• Latin • mihi est liber
• Irish • tá leabhar agam
• Russian • у меня есть книга

In Latin, the possessor is in the dative case. Irish and Russian place the possessor after a preposition roughly translating to ‘to’ or ‘at.’

In many Germanic languages such as Icelandic, verbs expressing states of being or of perception (which have a tendency to be stative in active-stative languages) take quirky subjects, or subjects which do not take the nominative case. The following examples put their subject in the dative case:

• Icelandic: Mér líkar þessi matur • “I_DAT like this food
• Old English: Gode lícað úre drohtnunge • “God_DAT likes our customs.”

This behavior emphasizes the lack of agency in the action of the verb that these subjects have, another hallmark of a fluid-S stative system.

Ancient Greek had many “deponent” verbs, which could not appear in the active at all, and had either intransitive or “stative” emotional or perceptive meanings. Below are some examples:

• γίγνομαι ‘I become’
• ἔρχομαι ‘I come’
• δύναμαι ‘I am able’
• βούλομαι ‘I am minded to, I want’
• οἴομαι ‘I think

Latin also had several deponents which only occured in the passive. Verbs like this demonstrate the prominence of stativeness in the grammar of these otherwise accusative languages.

Several Indo-European languages have strategies to make a typically active transitive verb into an intransitive or stative verb, most frequently by putting it into a “middle” or reflexive voice. Below are examples from Russian, which uses the reflexive suffix -ся:

• улыбаться ‘to smile’
• надеяться ‘to hope, to wish’
• сердиться ‘to be angry’
• ошибаться ‘to be mistaken’

Below are examples from Spanish, which also uses a reflexive pronoun se:

• enojarse ‘to become angry’
• caerse ‘to fall’
• morirse ‘to die’
• cansarse ‘to become tired’

The pervasiveness of detransitivizing techniques may be another remnant of an older active-stative grammatical system

English has a plethora of verbs known as ”labile” or ergative verbs. These ambitransitive verbs are so called because they exhibit an ergative-like behavior, wherein the subject of their intransitive uses are the same as the direct objects of their transitive uses. Below are some examples to demonstrate:

• TRANSITIVE: She burns the paper
• INTRANSITIVE: The paper burns

• TRANSITIVE: The sun melts the snow
• INTRANSITIVE: The snow melts

In both of these examples, the subject of the intransitive stative verb is equated to the direct object of the transitive active verb, almost as if it were an absolutive argument in an ergative-absolutive language.

Another point of interest with English ergative verbs is that they are often cognate with middles or passives in Greek and Latin. In the examples above, burn has a cognate in the Latin passive adjective dēfrutum, both being from a Proto-Indo-European root *bʰréu̯- ‘boil’, while melt shares a Proto-Indo-European root *(s)méld- ‘soften’ with the ancient Greek middle deponent μέλδομαι ‘I melt.’

The reconstruction for Proto-Indo-European cases based directly on the nominative-accusative evidence produces some typologically odd results for a nominative-accusative language. As explained above, nominative-accusative languages put the subject of intransitive verbs in the same case as the actors of transitive verbs. This nominative case is typically treated as the default case, and is most often not marked with any suffixes in languages which add suffixes to indicate case. However, this is not the situation in the earliest Indo-European languages, nor is it in a nominative-accusative reconstruction for Proto-Indo-European. Instead, these languages typically mark animate nominatives with *-s and animate accusatives with *-m – only the vocative case, and the nominatives and accusatives of inanimates, receive a zero marking:

In addition to the suffixing both nominative and accusative on animates (but no such marking on early inanimates), there are some other interesting connections between the nominative/accusative endings and the endings of other cases. Expanding out the table above:

The main points of interest when looking at the above cases are:

*dór·u ǵʰʷén-o h₂nér-m
a tree_ABS strikes (at) a person_DAT

δόρυ ἔπεφνε ἄνδρα^❦3 -α here is a syllabic reflex of *-m
a tree_NOM slays a man_ACC

❦1· Fortson 2004, p 103, 118
❦2· Mallory & Adams 2006, p 59; Luraghi 2009
❦3· -α here is a syllabic reflex of *-m