Re: Active again.

Peter Clark wrote:

> 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.
> Are there *any* terms that you would consider useful?
I'm tempted to say "no". ;) But what I mean is not that these
terms aren't useful, they're just not useful when determining if
a language is active or not. And I don't think it's very important
to determine if an active language is fluid or split. I mean, it's
of course a nice thing to report about a language, just not the
most important part. If the active alignment is based on control
or something else is more important, IMHO. (But the more info on
a language, the merrier we get, so I don't know why I'm writing
this. :)

If a language has just one fluid-marking predicate, I think it
gives the speakers the idea that you could have fluid marking
on more (or perhaps *all*) verbs. The idea is there. People want
to have fun with language. I know I would use this feature all
the time if I spoke a fluid-S language.

As long as a language is strictly split-S, the idea of having
fluid marking might just seem extremely wrong to the speakers,
just as it's wrong to say "Me fell down". But when the idea of
fluidness is there... Well, you see what I mean. This is imVho
I should note.

I do hope I don't come across as arrogant or condescending. It's
the other way around actually. :´/

> 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."
Qualifiers would be a good thing. I think a fully fluid-S language
would be defined as a language in which every predicate has the
*potential* of being marked as either A or P.

> 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.
I see. I didn't follow the original discussion too closely, because
it actually made me quite confused. And I have a tendency to give up
too quickly if I don't understand from the beginning. :/ (I blame the
Swedish school system for this. :P  ) Plus, I've been very busy at
work lately. (I don't blame the Swedish school system for this. :D  )

Daniel Andreasson