Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Many languages mark either accusative case (for objects of transitives) or ergative case (for subjects of transitives), but some `split ergative' languages mix the two systems depending on the type of nominal. It has been noted that these languages tend towards marking the less frequent case for each nominal type. This raises the question of what mechanism could underlie the emergence of such an efficient system. We propose a model that can provide an explanation, based on a simple reinforcement learning framework and simple assumptions about asymmetries between the kinds of nominals (e.g., pronouns vs. full noun phrases) that appear in subject vs. object position.