Re: Ergativity

Joe wrote:
>>>
I think the phrase 'soup cooks' is an Anglicism. I would translate 'Robert
cooks' and 'soup cooks' as Robert<abs> cooks, and Soup<abs> cooks<passive>,
respectively.
<<<
Oh! That's an intersting analysis... But in English passive voice is tagged
with either a suffix (-ed, -t) or an inflection (and sometimes both) and I
think--and may be wrong as well--that "soup cooks" is usually called a
mediopassive rather than a passive. In Japanese the base voice of "to cook"
is active transitive ("to cook something"), like "to cut", "to do", etc.,
while the base voice of "to open", "to break", etc., is mediopassive
intransitive.

sur-u (do), kir-u (cut), tak-u (cook) = active transitive
ak-u (open), kudak-u (break) = mediopassive intransitive

kir-eru (to get cut) = mediopassive intransitive
ak-eru (to open), kudak-eru (to break) = active transitive

Japanese verbal voices combine "active", "ergative" (or "factitive" voice),
"mediopassive", "absolutive", "transitive", "intransitive" in kinds of ways
(a bit like Hebrew verbal voices).
You can hop and hop again:

From one kind of transitive to intransitive:
tsunag-u (to connect something to) = transitive
tsunag-aru (to connect to) = intransitive

From that kind of intransitive to another kind of transitive:
maw-aru (to rotate) = intransitive
maw-asu (to make rotate) = transitive

From that other kind of transitive to another kind of intransitive:
moy-asu (to burn) = transitive
mo-eru (to burn) = intransitive

From that other kind of intransitive to the first kind of transitive:
kir-eru (to cut) = intransitive
kir-u (to cut) = transitive

IMHO -asu is a factitive suffix (by contrast to the
causative -(s)aseru), -aru is mediopassive and -eru switches transitive
to/fro intransitive or makes a factitive into a causative. The only unknown
factor is the -u suffix which does not tell whether the verb is transitive
or intransitive in the first place, and that's why -u/-eru pairs are tricky
:-)

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