Re: Lexicalising Ergativity

I'll jump in here, all uninformed......

As I recall from the Basque grammar I used to have, _all_ transitive verbs
take an ergative subject.  One expects it of course in things like "The man
hit me" or "We built a house", but I recall two exs. that always struck me
as odd: "The hand has 5 fingers" and "That white powder made me sneeze", in
both cases the subjects were Ergative.

The only reservation I have about this-- the grammar was from the 50s or
earlier, by one "Azkue", and I gather from Trask, and it was my own
impression, that he was sort-of cobbling together a "con-Basque" from
several different dialects.

I also know, from posts here in the past, that Georgian and various
Australian langs. use Erb/Abs with some verbs, Nom/Acc with others, so the
whole business comes in many flavors.