Re: Fifth morphosyntactic category?

English is morphologically clairvoyant (as far as nouns go, anyway)
but syntactically accusative.

And true, I wasn't counting the mixed systems like split-S (which I
guess would be split-I with the symbols I chose; I was trying to avoid
using "subject" since it is sort of a loaded term...)



On 8/5/08, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> Mark J. Reed:
> <<
> Can't remember what you call the ones that make no distinctions...
>
> Agent, Patient, Intransitive...
>
> A!=P!=I Tripartite
> A=P!=I Monster Raving Loony
> A!=P=I Ergative
> A=I!=P Accusative
> A=I=P ?
>  >>
>
> English?
>
> The dog slept.
> The cat slept.
> The dog chased the cat.
> The cat chased the dog.
>
> A=I=P
>
> Now, if word order isn't an issue, then you have a clairvoyant
> system--but, *man*, it'd *really* better be unpredictable word
> order and animacy.
>
> -David
> *******************************************************************
> "sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
> "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
>
> -Jim Morrison
>
> http://dedalvs.free.fr/
>
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>