Re: Active again.

On Tuesday 01 April 2003 03:05 am, Daniel Andreasson Vpc-Work wrote:
> Actually, the distinction between split-S and fluid-S isn't
> very useful at all. Well, it might be, but not for this
> discussion. Almost all active languages are fluid-S in some
> instances. The only exception I know of is Georgian, and I'm
> not sure about that either. It's useful to see it as a scale
> instead of two opposites. Most active languages allow for a
> lot (or just a few) verbs to take either A or P marking.
        Are there *any* terms that you would consider useful? I understand the part
about the scale being a continuum; perhaps qualifiers would be more useful?
E.g., "Enaymn leans heavily to the fluid-S side," "Language X is almost
exclusively split-S," "Language Y wavers between split-S and fluid-S
depending on the time of day."

> But split-S and fluid-S has nothing to do with transitivity.
        Right. But in the case of the discussion, we were talking about transitivity
in the case of nominative and ergative systems as well. (I.e., nominative
systems have S(a), while ergative systems have S(p), and active systems can
have either.) You can't talk about S(a) and S(p) without talking about A and
P; hence the link to transitivity. Sally originally thought that active
languages were a subset of ergative languages, so that's why we got on the
whole discussion of A, P, and S.
        :Peter

--
Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

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