Checking Absolutive Case in the Ergative Structure

This paper investigates the nature of Absolutive case and the syntactic mechanisms underlying its licensing. To this end, two recent minimalist approaches to the syntactic derivation of ergative structure will be introduced. Drawing on evidence from the syntactic derivation of clauses with intransitive complex predicates in Kurdish, it will be established that the Absolutive case is checked by the head of the Tense Phrase (T°). Thus construed, the chain of argumentation in this paper favors an approach to ergative structure where Absolutive case is treated on a par with Nominative case.