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

Christophe wrote:
>
>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 :(( .
I wasn't planning to have verbal agreement either ... the language is
supposed to about as low on morphology as is English. But the proper course
of action is clear - do enough work to write a text in it, and present it
here so that people more knowledgeable than me can pronounce the judgment!

                                                Andreas

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