Re: non-accusative, non-ergative, non-active ...

En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:

> If I had a language with no case affices, where word order in sentences
> with
> a transitive verb is SOV and in ones with an intransitive SV, could
> that
> language be meaningfully be classified as accusative, ergative, active
> or as
> not any of those three?
>
Well, ergativity, activity and nominativity don't depend only on case marking.
There is also verbal agreement (if the verb agreement marks, when they exist,
are identical for the subject of the intransitive verb and the object of the
transitive one, then the language is certainly ergative), syntactic ergativity
(the Gray Wizard is probably better than me to explain that, so I'll let him do
it :)) ), semantic problems (what do you put in S and what do you put in O?
Semantically speaking, is the S of an intransitive verb more often comparable
to the S of a transitive verb or to the O of a transitive verb?), etc...

Those categories fit also for languages without case marks nor verbal agreement
marks. You just have to know the correct criteria to apply. Well, I don't know
them all :(( .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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