Re: Ergativity Reference Done

Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting David Peterson <ThatBlueCat@...>:
>
>
>>One neat thing is that I named the third possible pattern.   What I
>>mean is that in a nominative-accusative pattern, S and A are
>>grouped together to the exclusion of P, and in an ergative-absolutive
>>pattern, S and P are grouped together to the exclusion of A.   There
>>is a third possible (though unattested) pattern where A and P are
>>grouped together to the exclusion of S.   I named this the duative-unitive
>>pattern, where A and P receive duative case, and S receives unitive
>>case.   I thought it was neat idea.   But, a couple questions remain: (1)
>>Did I get the names right (i.e., did I use the Latin roots correctly)?; and
>>(2) has someone somewhere already named these cases and this
>>pattern?
>
>
> This pattern has been, somewhat informally, been christened
> "monster-raving-loony", or "MRL" for short, which term has been used in various
> discussions on this list, perhaps most frequently and consistently by yours
> truly. The case-names I've seen, and used, are simply "transitive case" and
> "intransitive case".
This reminds me of the case pattern I had in mind for Tacsoy (a conlang
currently in a very early stage of development). There are two cases,
which I called nominative and "preferentive".

Furthermore, there are two types of verbs, type 1 and type 2. The types
are chosen at random for each verb (I might change this, and use some
semantical criterion instead). Type 2 verbs are inflected; type 1 verbs
are not.

These verb types give rise to two types of sentences:

Type 1 sentences are those that contain a type 1 verb. The subject is
put in the nominative, the object in the preferentive.

Ud           llhoR hih           mo  lomâk.
/Md          K\7R\ hih           m7 'l7mak/
PRON-1SG-NOM see   PRON-3SG-PREF in garden-NOM.
I see him in the garden.

Type 2 sentences are those that contain a type 2 verb. Subject and
object are both put in the preferentive. Note that the noun following
the preposition "mo" (time/place) is still nominative (nouns following
other prepositions get preferentive again).

Hih            @mpu                uð            mo  pis3s_.
/hih          '@mpM                MD            m7 'pisEs/
PRON-3PL-PREF interrogate-3PL-PRES PRON-1SG-PREF in city-NOM.
They interrogate me in the city.

In these examples, I did not consider agent/patient/experiencer/etc.
The verbs are arbitrarily assigned a type, and I guess they are
inherently nominative/accusative-like after all. Maybe I could shake
this nom/acc-yoke off by paying more attention to the semantical roles.


René