Re: yet another new lang sketch (sorry)

>From: "Dr. David E. Bell" <dbell@...>
>
> > From: J. Barefoot
> > ani al puyan musinaan ni'i al tisuuyaa
> > I.rel the woman-acc see.durative-past at the doorway-loc
> > I used to see the woman in the doorway.
>
> > Mixed ergative/accustive, and the ergative form happens to be the same
>as
> > the genitive form. The subject of this sentence is in the relative case
> > because it has a direct object.  Something like "I see" (an
>intransitive)
> > would just be "aminaani" with a personal prefix.
>
>I don't think I follow this.  Most mixed ergative/accusative systems
>condition the split on semantic or grammatical grounds, but they generally
>use erg/absol on one side of the split and nom/acc on the other.  For
>example, Dyirbal uses nom/acc for speech act pronouns and erg/absol for all
>other nominals.  Your example sentence doesn't seem to follow this kind of
>split.  One would have expected either:
>
>pure accusative
>I.nom the woman-acc...
>
>or
>pure ergative
>I.erg the woman.absol...
>
>mixed erg/acc
>I.nom the woman.absol
>or
>I.erg the woman.acc
>
>Could you explain the distribution of your nom, acc, rel and erg cases?
>
>David
>
The fourth phrase is correct. I.erg the woman.acc. "ani" is ergative and "al
puyan" is accusative. It's just that in this case system, ergative case and
genitive case have the same form, the "relative case". It's essentially
mixed erg/acc, with a little twist in forms. The distinction in case is made
between intransitive subjects (nominative), transitive subjects (relative),
and direct objects (accusative).

Jennifer

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