Re: Ergativity

Muke Tever wrote:
> Actually, I think that for most animate subjects that "X cooks" cannot be
> interpreted in more than _one_ way.  It's only when animacy is low enough that
> "X cooks" can be read in middle voice.
>
> (A split-system?)
More a matter of semantics, I would assume.  People aren't generally the
object of verbs like "cook".

However, with the verb "sell" which has similar behavior (e.g., "this
book really sells well" or "this book sells for $5.99"), I could see it
being used that way with human patients in discussions of slavery, e.g.,
"slaves sold rather well at auctions".

Less controversially, "Kittens sell well" sounds perfectly normal,
because kittens can't be agents of "sell", it must be interpreted as
patient, due to our knowledge of how the world works.

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42