A Categorial Analysis of Dyrbal, An Ergative Case - Marking Language

Abstract

Dowty's (1982a, b) treatment of grammatical relations in terms of compositional characters of functors(verbs) and arguments (NPs) seem to have problems with respect to case-marking languages such as Korean and Japanese. Particularly, his "Inverse Lexicalization Hypothesis" for the analysis of Dyrbal, an ergative language, is not adequate when we consider various linguistic facts barefully (the pronominal system and conjunction structures in Dyrbal, and some typological considerations, etc.). One version of Montague Grammar developed by Lee (1982) for the treatment of Korean, a case-marking language, works better in the analysis of Dyrbl. So, I argue for the latter system and present a categorial analysis of Dyrbal which does not accept "Inverse Lexicalization Hypothesis" but which treat grammatical processes (e.g., Passive) as category changing rules.