Re: Ergativity

On Tue, 5 Aug 2003 17:26:57 -0500, Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
wrote:

>Your situation is not clear, because I cannot tell whether the
>genitival marker is syntactically associated with the first
>argument ("me") as a kind of postposition, or with the second
>argument ("you") as a preposition. (If your language adheres
>to Greenbergian universals, with an SOV language you would have
>postpositions, not prepositions.) If the former, as a postposition,
>you do not have an ergative language, because the single argument
>of your two putatively intransitive constructions can be marked
>either as patient or as agent.  As such, your language would be
>a split-S or, more likely, a fluid-S language. If the genitival
>marker is associated with the second argument in the transitive
>construction, then you still do not have an ergative language,
>as the first argument is marked the same in all three examples.
Yes, 'n(w)a' is a postposition.

I'm sorry but I don't see how my second example sentence is intransitive.
To me, it still implies a direct object.  But I think that's due more to
the verb involved ('eat').

- Rob

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