Verbal Suffixes in Laki: Ergative Structure, Subject Agreement or Dependant Pronoun?

This study explores the person/number suffixes in Laki in a descriptive-analytic method. Having a broad distribution، these suffixes can attach to subject and object NPs، prepositions، and verbs. By considering the uniform syntactic behavior of subjects of transitive and intransitive predicates and it’s contrast with the behavior of objects of transitive predicates، the authors show that these suffixes are not ergative markers. The presence of these suffixes on prepositions as well as verbs، priority of verbal stem and not necessarily the first constituent of VP for hosting these endings and the agreement relation between these suffixes and direct objects evidences that viewing these suffixes as subject agreement markers is not on the right track. Finally، using evidenc like the uniformity of distribution of these suffixes with NPs and dependent personal pronouns، together with historical evidenc regarding the origination of verbal suffixes from pronouns، the authors argue that these suffixes are pronoun and are not fully converted into verbal agreement markers yet.