Re: Participles in ergative languages

On Oct 16, 2006, at 1:48 PM, Eldin Raigmore wrote:

> On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:47:24 -0500, Eric Christopherson
> <rakko@...>
> wrote:
>> I'm wondering if anyone has some insight into how participles are
>> used in ergative languages that have participles. (I am working on
>> making a daughter language of an ergative protoconlang created by
>> someone else.) I have a few issues with understanding them:
>>
>> 1. Voice. AFAIK, in accusative languages there are different
>> participles for different voices, e.g. active and passive -- thus
>> "loving" is an active participle, because it describes someone who is
>> an agent of loving; and "loved" is a passive participle, since it
>> describes someone who is a patient of loving. Do ergative languages
>> have e.g. an active participle, an antipassive participle, etc.?
>> (Actually, I'm not even sure if it is correct to call the usual voice
>> "active".) Do they have a passive participle, even if the actual
>> verbs don't recognize a passive category (which, AFAIK, some ergative
>> languages don't)?
>
> The important distinction is whether the participle denotes the
> agent of
> the verb or denotes the patient of the verb.  While this reasonably
> could
> be labeled a distinction of voice, I don't see why the voice-labels
> applied
> to participles necessarily have to be exactly the same as the voice-
> labels
> applied to finite verbs in the same language.
I'm beginning to be of that opinion.

> If you use "agentive participles" and "patientive participles" instead
> of "active participles" and "passive participles" (or "antipassive
> participles" and "absolutive(?) participles"), you'll avoid any
> confusion.
> That's only one idea, but it's the best one I've come up with so far.
Possibly, but I was seeking a precedent in description of natlangs,
preferably.

>
>> 2. If I want to say "I eat an apple", I would put "I" in the ergative
>> and "apple" in the absolutive. But what do I do if I want to say "I
>> am eating an apple", using a participle?
>
> Isn't this a distinction of aspect?
> Why must such distinctions involve participles?
I should have been more clear. I did not mean necessarily that the
periphrastic form would have a progressive meaning, although that's
basically the only way to interpret it in English. (I am assuming
there is some natlang out there that uses periphrasis for non-
progressive events; perhaps Basque applies?) (It's still possible
that the periphrastic construction *will* be used only for
progressive, but I don't want to limit it to that yet.)

> In English "to be" + "participle" gives progressive aspect (a sub-
> aspect of
> imperfective aspect),
> and "to have" + "participle" gives perfect (which could be
> considered a sub-
> aspect of perfective aspect).
> But in some languages  -- for instance, if I am not mistaken, some
> Slavic
> languages? -- aspect is purely a morphological feature of the verb,
> and is
> not periphrastically constructed via "light verb" + "participle or
> other
> non-finite verb-form".
>
> If your language has morphological progressives rather than
> analytic or
> periphrastic ones, you'd likely want to keep the agent ergative and
> the
> patient absolutive.  Of course if that's how your language handles
> progressives, the question of progressives wouldn't involve the
> question of
> participles.
>
The protolang I'm working from does in fact have a suffix for
progressive aspect, but I don't know if my language will use it widely.

>> On the one hand, I can imagine using those same cases, but on the
>> other
>> hand, it seems like you could conceive of the whole phrase "eating an
>> apple" as adjectival,
>
> I think I see what you mean.
>
>> and I think ergative languages generally use the absolutive for the
>> subject of an adjectival predicate. I.e. both "I" and "apple"
>> would be in
>> the absolutive
>
>> (unless of course the participle would require its objects to be
>> specified
>> in an oblique case, like the genitive).
>
> That solution appeals to me.
>
>> My intuition is that the choice of cases would depend on how
>> grammaticalized the copula+participle construction is -- whether it's
>> considered a periphrastic verb or simply the conjunction of a
>> copula and a
>> participle, parallel to conjunctions of copula and adjective or noun.
>
> Obviously I think that would at least have something to do with it.
> In the former case (copula+participle = periphrastic verb) you'd
> want the
> agent "I" ergative and the patient "apple" absolutive.
> In the latter case (copula+participle = copula + adjective) you'd
> want the
> agent "I" absolutive; and I would recommend the patient "apple" be
> in some
> third case.
> A choice you didn't mention is "progressive is not expressed as
> copula+participle".
>
>> =====================================================================
>> ====
>
> Interesting question!
>
> Thanks.
>
> -----
> eldin
Thanks for your insights!