Re: Ergative

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