Re: Nominative to ergative shift

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Matt Pearson wrote:
> > Not at all.  Many VSO languages (I'm thinking particularly of Polynesian and
> > Mayan languages) allow VOS as an alternate word order, which could become
> > dominant over time.
>
> Well, VSO as the EXCLUSIVE or MAIN word order is rare, languages where
> case is marked would be expected to have alternate word orders.
Exactly.  Of course, there's no case marking on nouns in Mayan (although there
*is* subject and object agreement morphology on the verb).

Matt.