Re: THEORY: unergative

True, I said 'anti-ergative' and 'anti-accusative' but
I wanted to say 'unergative' and 'unaccusative'. Well,
it's not very much clearer to me, but at least it's
more correct. And I was mistaken about the Basque way
to say *I shivered*.

I have to think all this over again. I'am reading a
book about actance just now, so maybe after I'll read
every chapter a dozen times, something will come out
of it.

I guess the first thing is to really understand the
ergative way of expressing, then we'll see for the
unergative and the rest of it. However, I already
noticed that some languages are half-accusative,
half-ergative, like Georgian, where the same sentence
will be expressed a different way, depending if it is
in present or in past tense. This I find absolutely
confounding. I have to find out why it is so !

--- Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
> En réponse à Philippe Caquant :
>
> Actually, I don't think there's anything called
> "antiaccusative" or
> "antiergative" out there :)) . If you mean
> "unaccusative" and "unergative",
> they do not "oppose" the normal accusative and
> ergative.
>
> >but the Basque or whatever would say :
> >By-me danced, or By-me shivered (meaning: There was
> >some dancing / shivering and it was done by me)
>
> No, that's incorrect. They would say:
> me danced, me shivered (i.e. the subject is in the
> absolutive!)
>

=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

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