Re: Ergative Construction?

At 8:16 AM -0500 10/12/01, William Annis wrote:
>         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):
>
>     hamTu-form          marû-form
>sing.   de              tum, tum
>pl.     lah               lah
>
>"to go:" ('G' is the g with a tilde on it), from s.258.
>     hamTu-form          marû-form
>sing.   Gen              du
>pl.     (e)re            sub
>
>Is this a normal feature of languages with ergativity?  Of course,
>Sumerian is only ergative in the hamTu aspect (probably perfective),
>and is nom-acc in the marû aspect (probably durative), but I gather no
>language is purely ergative.
Uto-Aztecan languages also have this feature. All of the languages
that I'm familiar with in the family are nominative-accusative, but
they show suppletion according to an ergative pattern in a manner
similar to what you show for Sumerian. In Shoshoni you have the
following examples of intransitive verbs which show suppletion based
on the number of the subject (<j> is the palatal glide; <y> is a
high, central unrounded vowel):

        singular          plural          gloss

        nukki             nutaa           'run'
        katy              jykwi           'sit'
        pahai             jokka           'fall off'
        yake              nawoih          'cry'
        yppyi             ykkoi           'sleep'

The following transitive verbs show stem suppletion based on the
number of the object:

        singular          plural          gloss

        pekka             wasy            'kill'
        jaa               hima            'carry'
        ka'a              ponka'i         'break'
        tawi              tappaiti        'throw'
        uttu              himi            'give'

To each list can be added about two dozen further forms. There are
also dual forms which are derived by reduplication from either the
singular stem or the plural stem. And then there's this one:

        singular    dual          plural      gloss

        wyny        tsatsakki     topo'i      'stand'

The dual is formed by reduplicating a synchronically non-existent stem.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                              Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead;
therefore we must learn both arts."            - Thomas Carlyle