The so-called passive in Māori has been the topic of a long-standing debate in the linguistics literature. Its frequency, especially in past tense narratives, makes this construction an atypical passive. It has been suggested that the passive in Māori is used with perfective (Clark 1973) and dynamic (Bauer 1997) events, and when the clause contains an affected direct object (Chung 1978). This thesis finds that all of these suggestions are correct, but, rather than a passive construction, it is ergative, so that Māori has split-ergativity. As predicted under the Transitivity Hypothesis (Hopper & Thompson 1980), the most transitive clauses in Māori have ergative marking, and less transitive clauses are accusatively marked. Transitivity is understood as a property of an entire clause, involving a number of factors, and the most important features of transitivity in Māori are PARTICIPANTS, AFFECTEDNESS OF O, ASPECT and PUNCTUALITY. Clauses that are low in transitivity are uniformly accusative, in both their morphology and syntax. However, highly transitive clauses, which we expect to follow ergative alignment, have some evidence of syntactic accusativity. This mixed behaviour follows directly from the Inverse Grammatical Relations Hypothesis (Manning 1996). Manning claims syntactic constructions like control, binding and imperative addressee are accusatively aligned in all languages, because they are restricted at argument structure. Languages can only be ergative at the level of grammatical relations, where syntactic processes such as relative clauses, question formation and topicalisation are restricted. It then follows that ergativity is only present in Māori at gr-structure in the most highly transitive clauses. We also look at Māori from a diachronic perspective, and see that it differs from its Eastern Polynesian sisters, which are all accusative. Māori is different because the extension of the imperfective pattern did not spread to all transitive clauses, thus preventing a reanalysis of imperfective clauses as active.

Previous research about the acquisition of the case-marking systems of ergative languages suggests that children acquire ergative and accusative languages equally easily (Van Valin 1992), depending on the degree to which the case morphology is consistently ergative or accusative and the degree to which adults use the morphology (Pye 1990). However, split-ergative languages incorporate both accusative and ergative systems, some in the midst of a shift away from ergativity, thus providing variable and inconsistent input for children. Yet previous research suggests that children can acquire variable linguistic forms at early stages, reflecting frequencies in which the forms occur in caregiver input (Henry 1998, 2002, Miller 2006, 2007, Westergaard 2009). This study examines the acquisition of split-ergativity in Kurmanji Kurdish, where the direct case is used with both present-tense agents and past-tense patients and the oblique case is used with past-tense agents and present-tense patients. However, recent research suggests the weakening of ergativity in Kurmanji (Dorleijn 1996), resulting in variable use of case-marking. This study examines the acquisition of split-ergativity in Kurmanji when considering the split systems and inconsistent adult input. Data from children (n=12) and caretakers (n=24) include spontaneous speech samples and results from a modified Agent-Patient test (Slobin 1985). Four children from three age groups, 1;6, 2;6, and 3;6, were recorded interacting with caretakers every three months for one hour over a 12-month period. Statistical analyses were conducted focusing on adult patterns (input for children) and children’s production at different ages. Results suggest that Kurmanji may be shifting away from a split-ergative system, with the past tense extending to a double oblique pattern and nouns gradually losing oblique case-marking altogether, resulting in variable case-marking. Data show that children first use ergative case as early as 2;0 and show evidence of repeated use of split-ergative case-marking by 2;6. Even at these early ages, children use similar variability and frequency in case-marking as their caretakers, closer to usage of younger adults versus older adults. Thus children seem to use ergative case-marking early, and when faced with inconsistent input, they ultimately conform to the patterns modeled by the adult community. / text