Re: Nominative to ergative shift

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
> 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 [snip]
Could you explain that? I'm not getting what you mean.
Is it a "nominative word order" (e.g. VSO) that can evolve
into an ergative system e.g. V-Abs-Erg?

>
> > 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.
Yeah, most nouns would have the former third person inflection. In
my lang there would be a number distinction in the inflection, but
then it was simplified. I was thinking of the first and second pronouns
-- but I guess most times you would use a noun, and so you would take
the 3rd person inflection for every absolutive (pro)noun.


> 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.
That's a nice development. I may use that. Thanks!


--Pablo Flores

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