Re: Case question

I wrote a lengthy response to this, but it appears to've died in a Free
freeze. Well, John Cowan has since answered you actual questions to, I hope,
satisfaction, so I'll just add that I think this is looking to be a really
cool lang.

I'll also point out that split- systemss can be majorly messed up; the example
I mentioned in my earlier post was Dyribal, which is, in pronouns,
morphemically accusative but syntactically ergative; that's too say that
despite the case marking being exactly parallel to the English in a sentence
like "he hit her and ran away", the Dyirbal version means that the "she" ran
away; the S ergatively mapping to the P in open defiance of that it has the
wrong case marking for an intransitive subject.

                                                 Andreas

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
> On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 06:06:48PM +0100, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
> > > So . . . is an I-E tripartite language at all believable, or is
> > > it beyond the pale?
> >
> > I'm no IEist, but if some IE langs could develop Monster Raving Loony
> systems,
>
> Okay, I'm familiar with the party, but what does the term refer to
> linguistically?
>
> > and others turn split-ergative, I figure one turning tripartite isn't out
> of
> > the question either.
>
> Ah, I didn't know there were ergative IE languages; thought they were all
> accusative.  What's "split-ergative"?
>
> > Now, let's see what you do with neuters, which are clairvoyant in the
> > classical IE scheme ...
>
> They are indeed, as you say, clairvoyant.  For instance, masculine singular
> has intransitive -o, nominative -os, accuastive -om, while
> neuter singular has -o for all three.  And the neuter plural of
> all three is the same as the collective/feminine singular intransitive
> -a.
>
> Not terribly original, to be sure, but it's also only the current
> state; I haven't worked out all the sound changes yet, so the
> endings are likely to morph somewhat.  So far, PIE /w/ -> /B/,
> unstressed vowel + sonorant -> syllabic sonorant, and an
> intervocalic voiced stop -> fricative.  That last change is
> not allophonic, as in Spanish, but a stage in the phone development;
> the modern language does in fact have some intervocalic voiced
> stops.  These developed either from voiceless unaspirated stops or
> in positions that were not originally intervocalic but have since
> seen the insertion of a vowel.
>
> -Mark
>

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