Re: Nominative to ergative shift

Nik Taylor wrote:

> VOS is also a very rare (altho not unknown) word order.  It seems odd
> for a lang to go from VSO to VOS, in my opinion.
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.  It has been claimed that Proto-Mayan was VOS, and
yet some of the daughter languages have since developed VSO order.  Why
not the reverse?

Matt.