Re: Ass metonymy (WAS: a bad essay)

2009/2/7 Sai Emrys <saizai@...>:
> English, including AAVE, is a
> nominative-accusative language exclusively AFAIK.
I think that two phenomena that are sometimes considered ergative-y in
English are unaccusatives(?) such as "I closed the door ~ the door
closed" and "I sold the book ~ the book sold well", and nouns in -ee
which generally refer not to the nominative subject or accusative
object of the verb but to the absolutive (retiree, escapee = subject
of intransitive "retire, escape"; employee, trainee = direct object of
transitive "employ, train"; addressee, assignee = indirect object of
transitive "address, assign").

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

Reply