Split ergativity in the NENA dialects

Different types of split ergativity are attested in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects, a group of over a hundred varieties spoken by Jewish and Christian communities in south-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq and north-western Iran. Although historically Aramaic is nominative-accusative, some ergative phenomena developed early through the influence of Iranian languages, especially Kurdish, which are ergative or have been ergative at some stage of their history. Nevertheless, the NENA dialects show some interesting autonomous developments, such as the extension of the ergative suffix to all intransitive verbs. The different types of split ergativity exhibited by the NENA dialects concern the expression of tense and aspect of the verbal phrase (ergativity developed only in the perfective aspect), the gradual extension of the ergative suffix to intransitive verbs, the expression of the pronominal object and the creation of new accusative markers and, finally, the expression of the pronominal subject. All these split-ergativity phenomena create a rather complex alignment system which can provide useful insights for future linguistic studies on ergativity.