Re: Ergativity
| From: | Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, August 10, 2003, 6:38 |
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If that is true then it seems to remove most of the point of ergativity.
And does Japanese inflect verbs for person? I would accept
Robert-<erg> cook-past-3rdpersonsingabs
But the sentence is still transitive so an erg is allowed. Perhaps it is
a problem with english not with the ergative languages, but "Robert
cooked" does not feel in English like it has a dropped argument, it just
feels intransitive. If you have a dropped argument even if the verb
inflection doesn't mark it, its still there from context, but "Robert
cooked" doesn't need context to supply what he cooked in order to feel
complete. And by my understanding in ergative languages if a verb is
intransitive then the argument it takes is abs. So I guess it comes down
to whether the sentence has a dropped argument or whether in the
ergative language cooked is being used as an intransitive verb. I still
think that if there is no abs that has been dropped just robert cooked,
it should be marked
Robert-<abs> cook-past-antipassive
Or some antipassive construction should be used.
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