Re: Nominative to ergative shift

FFlores wrote:
> Is this likely to happen?
I don't think that it's likely to happen in a language with nominative
*morphology*, but obviously it can happen in a language with nominate
*syntax*, since if it couldn't, there'd be no ergative langs (and we
know that ergative langs can become nominative).

> The main weird thing about this is that the marked nouns
> are "absolutive", which is usually *un*marked AFAIK in most
> ergative languages. And it's a different mark according to
> the person.
How would person be involved?  All nouns would cause third person
inflection in the verb, and so would have what once was third person
endings as prefixes - it would also have a number distinction, if the
verb differentiated between third person singular and plural.  However,
AFAIK, there is no ergative lang where absolutive is marked and ergative
isn't.  It's unlikely to remain marked.  Most likely, it would be lost.

However, starting with no marking for nominative or accusative, as you
had, here's a possible evolution: an INSTRUMENTAL preposition can become
an instrumental case-marker, which can evolve into an ergative marker.
IIRC, one of the Indic languages had a similar evolution.

>  Alexander Graham Bell's Observation:
>   When a body is immersed in water,
>   the phone rings.
I love that sig!

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