Re: Ergativity

"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... as for languages not following strict definitions
like in mathematics, I would argue that we were talking about an
unspecified ergative language, not a specific one, and how an ergative
language in general would do it, so I think I was right in answering by
applying the definition of an ergative language which says that S & P
are united so it should be Robert-<abs> cooked. I did admit in an
earlier email when someone brought up dropped arguments that it might be
Robert-<erg> cooked if there was a dropped argument, but I said that if
the sentence was intransitive then an ergative language should have
Robert as an abs. If a specific language had been mentioned or a
specific way of doing things specified other than just an ergative
language then it might have been different, but I still feel
Robert-<abs> cooked is the most likely thing for a truely ergative
language to do it if cooked is being intransitive and does not have a
dropped argument.