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Abstract Recent studies have proposed that ergative verbs are employed in Old Chinese, and its morphophonemic variations also exhibit ergative characteristics, suggesting it might be an ergative language. This paper presents different perspectives both theoretically and empirically, arguing that Old Chinese is a neutral language in alignment. It suggests that ergativity are coding strategies of grammatical relations between the verb and the core arguments. Such strategies employ either case markings on the full noun phrases and/or pronouns, or certain verbal person marking.
Theoretically, on the one hand, the essence of such analyses largely pertains to unaccusativity within the formalist framework, rather than addressing the typological pattern of grammatical relations. In formal syntax, ergative/unaccusative verbs constitute a subclass of verbs, focusing on verbal semantics and transitivity differences (i.e., unaccusativity). Nevertheless, an ergative language concerns the formal strategies of grammatical relations, namely the alignment of A, S, and P (i.e., ergativity). The only similarity between the two frameworks lies in that formal syntax borrowing the term “ergative” from typology to label a verb subclass (ergative verbs). The presence and/or quantity of ergative/unaccusative verbs are not criteria for ergativity. Old Chinese is not an ergative language although it employs ergative verbs.
On the other hand, the “semantic ergativity” analysis posits that Old Chinese exhibits an “agent-patient homonymy” via XVY/YV alternations, where Y in subject and object positions is semantically equivalent. However, this phenomenon still pertains to verbal semantics and transitivity—a syntactic unaccusative feature—rather than reflecting grammatical relations in alignment typology.
Empirically, Old Chinese verbs do not cross-reference any person information, let alone the alignment of A, S, and P, which differs the ergative patterns in verbal person marking. Tonal changes in Old Chinese serve as morphological strategies, which signal changes in the semantic properties of verbs (e.g., action vs. state) rather than marking grammatical relations between verbs and arguments. Analyses interpreting such tonal alternations as reflecting a hybrid of ergative and accusative syntax also focus on transitivity. Such “semantic equivalence” differs significantly from the “conjunction reduction” in syntactic ergativity. Modern Chinese is occasionally analyzed as a split ergative language. The classification of causative verbs as ergative and (di)transitive verbs as accusative parallels such unfortunate analyses, although both lack evidences in alignment.
It concludes that Old Chinese is not an ergative or an accusative language but a neutral language in that it employs no morphological markings on the noun/pronoun or certain person markings on the verb. A distinctive feature of Old Chinese verbs is their capacity to express both action and state, function as both verbs and nouns, and alternate between transitive and intransitive uses. The essence of ergative verbs lies in the flexibility of transitivity and root in the action-state continuum, which is a pervasive feature in Old Chinese.
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Published: 08 October 2025
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