Semantic intransitivity and case licensing in Bumthang

Abstract

Bumthang, a language of central Bhutan, participates in many of the Himalayan areal norms with respect to case marking, including an ergative case that is not categorial in usage, and which can appear with some intransitive predicates. In 2016, Donohue & Donohue reported on the variable use of the ergative case marker in Bumthang transitive clauses, identifying a number of largely pragmatic, semantic, and informational structural contexts that license the use of the ergative case on the subjects. Given the nature of the factors involved we examined similar conditions for arguments of monovalent verbs, not a typical context for receiving ergative case if structural conditions were uniquely determining case, but which would likely also be sensitive to these same factors. We found that there are some contexts in which the sole argument of an monovalent verb can bear ergative case, drawing on some of the same features, but not identical to those relevant for transitive verbs. In particular, the notion of agentivity is of paramount importance for licensing ergative case arguments of monovalent verbs, and we discuss the set of factors that need to coincide for this to happen. Unlike the work presented in Donohue & Donohue 2016 which focussed on transitive clauses, when considering intransitive verbs as well, the notion of ‘semantic transitivity’ (e.g. Hoppen & Thompson 1980) is very useful in understanding the collection of factors contributing to the licensing of ergative case.