Re: THEORY: unergative

The way I see it is different.  Forget all that stuff about "ergative"
and "nominative" and so on.  Instead, look at a transitive sentence.
You have an agent and a patient.  We'll use these terms.  So, in both
ergative *and* accusative languages, you have (to borrow takatunu's
example):

Chicken-agent lay egg-patient.

Now, then, what about intransitive verbs?  As in "The man ran"?
Accusative languages will call that noun "agent", thus "Man-agent ran".
Ergative languages will call that noun "patient", thus "Man-patient
ran".  Others will mix them, using "agent" with some verbs, and
"patient" with others.  And, indeed, some intrasitive verbs make more
sense with agent, while others make more sense with patient.  For
example, with "run", agent makes more sense, because it's a volitional
action, wherein the one doing the action is not (directly) affected by
the action.  However, in a verb like "burn", patient makes more sense,
because it's non-volitional, and the noun is being affected.  Consider
the similarity in the role of "house" in "The arsonist burned down the
house" and "The house burned down".  Or "baby" in the sentences "The
woman gave birth to the baby", "The baby was born".  In English, we use
a passive verb there, but some languages use active verbs for "be
born".  My Uatakassi, which is ergative, uses the same verb for both "be
born" and "give birth".  The translation just depends on whether the
agent is mentioned.  Thus, _fasafitas tisista_ "The girl was born"
(past-born-he/she girl) and _fasafitas tipital tisistas_ "The woman gave
birth to the girl" (Past-born-he/she woman-erg girl).

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