[despammed] Re: conjugating by object

Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
> Cree, like other Algonkian languages, expresses the person of
> the actant according to an animacy, not a deixis, hierarchy,
> although the two can easily be confused.  First and second
> (together) persons outrank third person animate proximative,
> which outranks third person animate obviative, which outranks
> third person inanimate (there is no prox/obv distinction in
> inanimates).  Crucially, there is no ambiguity in grammatical
> relations:  who does what to whom is determined by separate
> direct or inverse theme markers, which indicate whether the
> subject outranks the object on the animacy hierarchy.  In
> Meskwaki, the language I've been studying for the last quarter,
> first and third person affixes do not themselves change:
>
>   (1) newa:pama:wa
>       ne-wa:pam-a:-w-a
>       1-look.at-DIR-3-SG.SUBJ
>       'I look at him'
>   (2) newa:pamekwa
>       ne-wa:pam-ekw-w-a
>       1-look.at-INV-3-SG.SUBJ
>       'He looks a me'
>
> This thus constitutes an entirely separate system for grammatical
> relations, to stand beside nominative-accusative, ergative-absolutive,
> Split-S, and Fluid-S systems.
I've heard of nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive, but not
Split-S or Fluid-S systems. Could you explain, or give a link to a good
online resource?

Reply