Smuggling, ergativity, and the final-over-final condition

This paper argues that the lack of SVO ergative languages (“Mahajan’s Generalization”; see Taraldsen 2017) can be explained by the combination of a smuggling analysis of ergative alignments and the Final-over-Final-Condition (FOFC), which bans orders where a head-final category has a head-initial category in its Specifier (the head-initial category may have moved there, given the prevalence of roll-up derivations in surface head-final languages). The smuggling derivation, when the smuggled category is internally head-initial, creates a configuration which violates FOFC. For this reason, SVO and ergativity do not combine in the world’s languages, a notable typological lacuna that has hitherto defied explanation. The implications of the analysis for V-initial ergative languages and for passives are briefly explored.