Re: THEORY: unergative

E fésto Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:
> 1/ Languages like Latin or English use transitive
> verbs (among others), like in:
> I shot the sheriff
> *I* is understood as agent, thus subject and in the
> nominative case
> *the sheriff* is understood as the patient, thus
> object and in the accusative case (I shot him)
> The passive form would be :
> The sheriff was shot by me (*me* being facultative,
> but if present, at an oblique case)
>
> 2/ But there are languages, like Basque, various
> Caucasian langs and others, using another way :
> By-me shot the sheriff
> *me* being in ergative case, and *the sheriff* in
> absolutive
> What conception does such a form reflect ? I think I
> understand it as : "There was some sheriff-shooting,
> and that was done by me". Maybe I'm wrong ?
Yes, that's wrong.  "nominative" means agent or subject.  "ergative"
(means "working" or "acting") still means agent (though only agent).  The
agent is the same in both languages.  "accusative" is patient, and
"absolutive" is patient or subject, and "the sheriff" is the patient in
both languages also.


You may be getting it confused with topic or focus (which is what your
"there was some..." sentence sounds like) because you have put "by-me" as
the translation of 1SG.ERG, but it is still only "I" that should go there.
("I" is agent or subject, "me" is patient.)


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