Person-Case effects in Tseltal

Abstract

In this paper I show that in Tseltal (Mayan), constructions with aspectual auxiliary only admit third-person internal arguments, whereas embedding verbs that assign ergative case exhibit no such restriction. I offer an account of this contrast in terms of multiple-agree account of person-case constraint (PCC, Anagnostopoulou 2003; Anagnostopoulou 2005; Béjar and Rezac 2003) and inherent case theory of ergative case (Woolford 1997; Legate 2008; Aldridge 2007; Anand and Nevins 2006 inter alia). I show that the presence of PCC effects with aspectual verbs and absence of this restriction with transitive embedding verbs is predicted by these two theories. I then extend my account of PCC in Tseltal to show that some nominal ergative splits can be accounted for using the same framework.