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Re: Ergative

From:R. Skrintha <srik@...>
Date:Thursday, October 22, 1998, 9:35
Hi,

On Tue, 20 Oct 1998, JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:

[...]

> I'm interested to see that Tamil has the experiencer dative construction > alongside Hindi. Does Tamil also have split-ergativity? (I seem to > remember that the Dravidian languages are nominative/accusative, but > I may be mistaken...)
Since the verbs for which the experiencer dative is available in each lang appear to coincide (eg., know/need/like), I suppose that one of the langs (or their parent-langs) might have borrowed it fromm the other. I believe it could have been either way. A good many (non-linguistic) scholars, judging by the considerable influx of Sanskrit words into Tamil, assume that the interaction was always one-way. What a surprisingly many Sanskritologists themselves are not aware of is that even as early as Rk Veda (> 1500 BC), the grammar of Vedic Skt already shows considerable departures away from IE syntax towards Dravidian, which is a more subtle effect than the borrowing of open-class words. Furthermore, during the Classical era, because of invasions from Huns, Turks/Tatars and Afghans, many ancient centers of learning in Northern India were destroyed, and gradually Persian arose as the chief language patronized by the royals. This shifted the focus point of native intellectual traditions to the South, which witnessed the advent of many Acharyas ("philosopher-teachers"), like Madhva, Ramanuja, Deshika, et al. who were adept in both Skt and the Southern langs, which might have further introduced similarities between these langs as used today. As to whether split-ergative structures are found in Tamil, you are quite right, there aren't any! Regards, skrintha