Re: THEORY: Mixed erg/acc

Matt Pearson:

> >Alternative (a).  If the transitive subject is 1st/2nd person and
> >the object is non-1st/2nd, then the subject is in the NOM form
> >and the object is in the ACC form (i.e. both are unmarked).  If
> >the transitive subject is non-1st/2nd and the object is 1st/2nd,
> >then the subject is in the ERG form and the object is in the NOM
> >form (i.e. both are marked).
Pablo Flores:

> How is NOM unmarked on a 1st/2nd-person subject while
> marked on a 1st/2nd-person object? I mean, why call
> it "nominative case" if it has two forms and one is
> zero? Unless you meant ABS instead of NOM the last time...
I think he meant ACC the last time, as Nik and David has already
pointed out.

> What I had in mind was:
>
>     1s.NOM hit dog.ABS     (a1)
> OR  1s.NOM hit dog.ACC     (b1)
>     'I hit the dog.'
>
>
>     dog.ERG bite 1s.ACC    (a2)
> OR  dog.ERG bite 1s.ABS    (b2)
>     'The dog bites me.'
>
> with ABS and NOM unmarked. Is either of these plausible?
It's alternative (a) that is 'mixed ergative'. So that's
what you should go with if I got you first intentions right.

> Should I merge ACC and ABS? (That would make it more
> like an active system, wouldn't it?).
Not quite. Active is rather split-intransitive (at least
in one of the meanings). That is, you have one case for
Agents and one for Patients as usual, but when it comes
to intransitive verbs, they can get marked as either
A or P, depending on e.g. the inherent semantics of
the verb or if the speaker wants to differ between two
meanings of a single verb (like volitionality).

But if you merge ACC and ABS that would be very interesting.
(Note though that ACC is usually the marked and ABS the
unmarked case.) Then you would mark all the objects alike,
but differ between locutor (1+2p) Agents and non-locutor Agents.
In fact, that's really cool!

The question is how you would treat intransitive verbs.
You could add an 'active touch' by being able to use all
three cases (NOM for 1+2p, ERG for other Agents and ABS/ACC
for Patients). How about that?

Daniel