Re: Ergativity

I would like to point out I was merely using english to give an example,
and I have admitted several times after my initial email that I am not
talking about an omitted absolutive argument, as seems to be the case in
what I think is being talking about now... I am talking about when there
is no ommited argument to be guessed from the context. The meaning of
"The rice cooked" that we are talking about is that the rice was cooked,
but who or what cooked it does not need to be supplied or guessed or
assumed to give the sentence a sense of completeness in english. A
similar thing applies to "Robert cooked". In english this is complete on
its own and what he cooked does not need to be guessed or implied for
the sentence to be complete. These two english sentences do not have
omitted arguments and the information which has not been supplied is not
necessarily important in any way whatsover.
 We were talking about ergative languages in general not about any
particular language and I was arguing that if, as above, there was no
ommited argument in the sentence, and it was complete in and of itself,
then the rice in the first and robert in the second should be marked
absolute in typical ergative language, since the definition of ergative
is S & P are treated in the same way and A is treated differently.
Perhaps the language would use a passive marking on the first or an
antipassive marking on the second or perhaps not but I believe a typical
ergative language would mark it this way. However, since there seems to
be few languages which are able to always fulfil the definition of
ergative or absolutive to a large extent I am beginning to think that
the term, or at least how it is used on this group, since I am not
studying linguistics at university or in a formal way and have not
talked about ergativity with anyone else, is essentially worthless as
has already been said by someone else, and that in future I will just
ignore it since it seems to mean little if anything. I will instead read
the details if they are provided.
 Now since we're all completely entrenched in our viewpoints and I don't
think anyone's going to go anywhere, can we please stop this thread
unless someone has something really new to say? I'm sorry to sound
aggressive or worked up, but typing the same thing again and again does
that to me.