Re: Ergativity

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nik Taylor" <yonjuuni@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 5:48 AM
Subject: Re: Ergativity


> Chris Bates wrote:
> >
> > Okay, I give in... *sigh* I don't want to argue anymore lol... even
> > though it makes no sense to me whatsoever I accept that people call
> > languages that do that ergative. I just don't accept that it makes
> > sense... I'm a mathematician, we like clear cut definitions for all our
> > terms.
>
> Well, mathematics is one of the few areas that allows for absolute,
> clear-cut divisions.  :-)  There's just no way to divide languages
> easily and uncontroversially into types.  Labels are just conveniences.
> Just as there's no such thing as a purely isolating, or purely fusional,
> or purely agglutinating language, so there's no such thing as a purely
> ergative language.  It's a matter of degree.  Some languages, such as
> Hindi will even use ergative marking in the past tense, but accusative
> marking in the present tense.  :-)
I'm sure there *are* purely ergative languages.  Just not many.  However, in
the case of the sentence 'Robert<erg> cooks', in an Ergative system, it must
be translated as 'Robert cooks it', not just 'Robert cooks', which would be
'Robert<abs> cooks'.

> But, here's my question.  If a language marks nouns with S & P one way,
> and A another, but verbs agree with S & A, and S/A is an obligatory
> argument, what would you call it?  It's not purely ergative, and it's
> not purely accusative.  I suppose you could call it "mixed", but then in
> that case, there'd be no language on Earth that would be called
> "ergative".  Ergative languages generally have at least *some*
> accusative features.
The verbs have nothing else to agree with, I suppose.  And besides, I'm sure
there are Ergative languages with verbs that don't inflect for person.

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