Optional ergative marking in Tujia

This article investigates optional ergative marking in Tujia, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in south-central China. It is shown that the Agent in Tujia is optionally marked, and that the use of the optional ergative marker ko ³⁵ is multifunctional. It is used to disambiguate the semantic role of Agent, to emphasize agency, and to focalize an Actor in a discourse context. Several factors, including word order, telicity, perfectivity, verbal semantics, information structure and discourse-pragmatics, play a role in determining the use or non-use of the ergative marker. Secondly, the historical source of the optional ergative marker is explored. It is hypothesized that the morpheme lie ²¹ was originally an instrumental marker whose meaning became extended to encompass the marking of ergativity. Later, this morpheme lost its ergative meaning, after the third person singular pronoun ko ³⁵ acquired the role of optional ergative marker, as a result of language contact with Chinese. The analysis may enhance the understanding of the variety of uses and the sources of ergative case marking in Tibeto-Burman languages in general.