Re: Ergative Construction?

In a message dated Fri, 12 Oct 2001 9:26:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time, William
Annis <annis@...> writes:

>  >Definitely! Agreement of the verb in number with the subject of an
>  >intransitive sentence, and with the object of a transitive
>  >sentence. Avar is also a natlang where the verb agrees only with the
>  >object of transitive sentences and the subject of intransitive ones
>  >(don't ask me more about it, I know that only because it's an
>  >example given in the booklet I have with me right now :) ). As for
>  >the fact that the verb agrees only in number (or does it agree in
>  >person too?), it's a feature that exists in some languages. In some
>  >languages even, it's the form of the verb that says whether the
>  >subject, or a complement (depending on the language) is singular or
>  >plural :) .
>
>         Now this is very odd.  After years of looking, I finally found
> a Sumerian grammar in English (technical German is slooooow reading
> for me), and it seems Sumerian has this singular/plural verb
> difference, sometimes with suppletives filling out the possible
> forms.  From section 265 of "The Sumerian Language" by Marie-Louise
> Thomsen -- my copy arrived yesterday :) -- "to bring" has these forms
> (I'm omitting the cuneiform ident subscripts):
[snip examples]

In the language which I'm describing (Tentatively called Syemkup), the
plural/singular difference indicates different semantic absolutives as oppossed
to ergatives. There is as well as this distinction, a distinction made between
the person doing the action.

I'm probably not articulating that well enough, so I'll just show examples.

myo' "to hunt"

Singular Object    Plural Object
myo'eny myo'emi'    myo'seny   myo'semi'
myo'et  myo'li'     myo'set    myo'seli'
myo'    myo'yi'     myo'es     myo'seyi'

The forms are basically the same in Intransitive verbs, except for the 3rd person,
where the absolutive agreement suffixes show the number of the subject:

myo'indakrinyi
  "to enter into a open area while hunting"  (or something to that effect)

myo'indakrinyiny   myo'indakrinyimi'
myo'indakrinyit    myo'indakrinyili'
myo'indakrinyi     myo'indakrinyis

So, as you can perhaps see, the singular/plural marking as -s is only used in an
ergative context, unlike, I think, Sumerian or Ainu. I know in Ainu for
example, the singular/plural distinction applies to both transitive and
intransitive verbs, but the truly ergative structure comes in with the use of
different personal affixes.


Elliott