Re: Participles in ergative languages

On 10/16/06, Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:
>
> 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.
> 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.
>
A good start, but I think "agentive" and "patientive" would mean
something different.  For example, I believe agentive nominalization
in English (-er) requires that the verb take an argument with an agent
(or instrument) role:

He bites the dog -> He is a biter.
He walks -> He is a walker.
He arrives -> ??He is an arriver.

(Meanwhile, the "patientive" nominalization (-ee) (is that the word
for it?) requires a patient... we can make the noun "walkee" but it
can't mean "one who walks", only "one who is walked".)

But an active participle isn't really "agentive"; it's more
"nominative", in that it treats intransitive subject like a transitive
subject whether its an agent or a patient:

He bites the dog -> Biting the dog, he made journalistic history.
He walks -> Walking down the street, he saw an accident.
He arrives -> Arriving in the nick of time, he prevented certain disaster.

The passive participle, on the other hand, won't describe the subject
even if the subject is a semantic patient:

He bites the dog -> Bitten by the man, the dog made journalistic history.
He arrives -> *Arrived in the nick of time, he prevented certain disaster.

Anyway, we can look at nominalizations and participles in the same
sort of way we do verb alignment: English has nominative-accusative
alignment in its participle system but a Split- or Fluid-S system for
its argument-referencing nominalizations.  As you said above, there's
no a priori reason that these different subsystems have to match the
alignment of the finite verb system.

----------

I think your basic idea is good.  We could adopt the following terminology:

An agentive nominalization denotes the agent-like argument. (-er)
A patientive nominalization denotes the patient-like argument. (-ee)
A nominative nominalization denotes transitive subjects and
intransitive subjects.
An accusative nominalization denotes transitive objects only.
An ergative nominalization denotes transitive subjects only.
An absolutive nominalization denotes transitive objects and
intransitive subjects.

And similarly for participles.

-- Pat

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