The origin of ergative case markers: the case of Hittite revisited

Hittite neuter nouns must take a dedicated -ants/antes form when they occur as the subject of a transitive verb. There is still no consensus on the interpretation of this pattern: while for some scholars -ant- is a derivational suffix that indicates gender motion from neuter to common gender, others hold that -ants is an ergative case marker, and that Hittite features a gender-based system of split ergativity. In this paper, we discuss evidence on the distribution of -ants nouns in chronologically ordered Hittite texts, which shows that whereas the suffix started out as derivational in Old Hittite, it became an ergative case ending in New Hittite. Based on these findings, we assess the semantics of the suffix at its derivational stage based on comparison with other -ant- formations, and show how the various functions of the suffix may have paved the way for its development into an ergative case marker. We then discuss the reconstruction of alignment in Proto-Anatolian, which we compare with areal tendencies detectable in ancient Anatolia, and frame the Hittite developments within typological data on the rise of ergativity.