Ergatividade cindida, papel temático e causativização na língua Ka’apor

Abstract

This paper examines the Case and theta role assignment to DPs in theKa’apor language. Our hypothesis is that Ka’apor manifests a split Casesystem, which may be triggered either by the semantic nature of stativepredicates or by the DPs that receive the theta role “paciente/theme”.In addition to this, we propose that the enclitic particle [.ke] may bedescribed as the (absolutive) Case and thematic role assignment toobject and to subject of unaccusative verbs. We also postulate that thecausative prefix {mu- ~ m-}, which occurs in ergative predicates, is themorphological manifestation of the light verb. Finally, we propose toextend the obligatory Case parameter in order to explain the split Casesystem of the Ka’apor. Thus, we suggest that Spec-TP is activated forassigning the (nominative-absolutive) structural Case to the subjectsof active transitive, unergative and unaccusative verbs and Spec-vP isactivated for assigning the absolutive Case to the object and to the subjectof stative verbs.