Braj in the Ergativity Hierarchy

Abstract

In generative literature, it is often assumed that closely related varieties differ minimally due to local effects of features (Barbiers 2009, Kayne 2000, 2013), with these small-scale differences located on the lower end of the Parameter Hierarchy (Biberauer and Roberts 2012, Roberts 2012). This paper re-visits one such hierarchy on ergativity (Sheehan 2017) by presenting novel dialectal data from Braj (Indic). Specifically, we illustrate that (a) ergative micro-variations in the language ensue not from feature level variation, but from underlying syntactic structures which in turn, have consequences for a v+erg head; these structural changes, however, affect a small domain, and (b) there exist cases of intra-dialectal case alignment variation, unpredicted by the hierarchy, which we relate to a phi-complete T head that is gradually superseding the v+erg head.