Re: Ergativity

 Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...> wrote:

<<<
"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 mus be translated as 'Robert cooks it', not just 'Robert cooks',
which would be 'Robert<abs> cooks'."
-----
Thanks Joe. :) Finally, someone who agrees with the way I feel it should
be. :D Thank god...
>>>
So you'd have:

Robert <---cooks
Soup <---cooks

The difference would be that "soup" is either (i) being under elaboration or
(ii) merely being re-heated by SOME cook while Robert is elaborating or
re-heating SOME food. That's where determination comes on stage.
Determination adds an information to a first information which becomes a
reference. In ergative systems, the reference is the underlying result of
the process:

a/some---the
after---before
result---goal
absolutive---ergative
to fish (a fish)---to capture a fish
etc.

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