Los casos morfosintácticos del chocho

Abstract

Recent typological generalizations about differences between ergative and accusative case systems have at times highlighted "syntactic" case to such an extent that the functional importaince of morphological case has been overlooked. Much of the literature has failed to recog¡ze the separate identity of a third sort of system, the active-inactive. This article presents data on both "syntactic" and "morphological" cases in Chocho, an active case language, and argues that in the typology of case, the category active-inactive needs to be treated as independent from both ergative-absolutive and nominative- accusative.