Re: Ass metonymy (WAS: a bad essay)
| From: | Sai Emrys <saizai@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, February 7, 2009, 9:38 |
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On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 8:19 AM, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
> The examples you've given look like "ass" can only be used ergatively
> (that's the right term, right? for the patient of a verb. I keeop getting
> them mixed up).
It's not the right term. I think you may mean "accusatively".
I suggest you read http://dedalvs.conlang.org/notes/ergativity.php
and/or the section in Describing Morphosyntax about this. Both are
excellent explanations of ergativity. English, including AAVE, is a
nominative-accusative language exclusively AFAIK.
I rather like Payne's three-point diagram representation of the
difference between nominative & ergative.
- Sai
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