Re: relative tense / universals / object agreement

At 03:41 PM 3/22/99 +0100, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
>Nik Taylor wrote:
>
>>Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
>>> That would be very interesting - it's most often that marking for S and O is
>>> optional, while the marking A is obligatory, since in intransitive sentences
>>> marking for the subject is redundant - in fact, third person singular
>>> subject/object is most often the default, unmarked actant.
>>> I'd very much like to see some examples...
>>
>>Not so.  In nominative languages, S and A are often obligatorily marked,
>>while O is less often marked, but in ergative languages, S and O are
>>often obligatorily marked, while A is less often marked.  The absolutive
>>relation is "closer", so to speak, to the verb than the ergative, in the
>>same way that the nominative is closer than the accusative.
>
>It must depend heavily on the language group then - my observation certainly
>holds true for the Himalayan languages I have studied - but then I don't know
>much about Australian or Caucasian languages. I'm fairly sure
>about Nepali too (and that would imply Hindi too), and Tibetan, but I'm
>handicapped
>in not having my references here. I'll take a look in Dixon's Ergativity
>tonight.
I think you guys have misunderstood each other, and are actually talking
about different things.  If I've understood this thread correctly, Boudewijn
is talking about case marking on noun phrases, and Nik is talking about
agreement marking on verbs.  You seem to be saying opposite things because
the argument that's _least_ likely, cross-linguistically, to have overt case
marking on the NP is the one that's _most_ likely to be cross-referenced by
person-and-number agreement marking on the verb: that is, the nominative (S
and A) in nominative-accusative languages and the absolutive (S and O) in
ergative-absolutive languages.

-------------------------------------------------
Tim Smith
timsmith@global2000.net

Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please.
- Mark Twain