The discourse basis of ergative marking in Gooniyandi

This paper investigates “optional” ergative marking in Gooniyandi (Kimberley, Western Australia): that is, the phenomenon whereby the ergative case-marking postposition may be either present or omitted from an Agent phrase. On the basis of an investigation of a corpus of narrative texts it is argued that the presence vs. absence is semantically significant. In particular, it is suggested that use of the ergative marker foregrounds the agentivity or Agent status of the Agent (A), whilst omission relegates this relational quality to the background. Foregrounding may be understood as an aspect of the organisation of the text as a text, and hence we can speak of “discourse basis” of the ergative marker in Gooniyandi. On the other hand, the reasons for a speaker deciding to foreground agency may relate to matters other than textual organisation, including lexical-semantic properties of verbs