Source constructions as a key to alignment change

Abstract

Alignment patterns in the Eastern varieties of modern Aramaic varieties are generally said to originate in an ergative source construction based on the so-called ‘passive’ participle qṭīl- ‘killed’ and the preposition l- where ergative person markers gradually extended to all intransitive predicates. While various source constructions have been suggested, this article demonstrates that most explanatory power and scope for the complex historical background of the alignment microvariation in Neo-Aramaic is offered by the typology of resultatives. There was instability from the beginning due to the versatile nature of resultatives and the increasing polyfunctionality of the preposition l-. This, in turn, indicates that the suggested source constructions for ergative alignment need not be mutually exclusive. Moreover, this also points to ergativity as merely one among several outcomes rather than the original source.