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Re: yet another new lang sketch (sorry)

From:Dr. David E. Bell <dbell@...>
Date:Saturday, November 13, 1999, 0:40
> From: J. Barefoot > > > >Could you clarify the case system? Is it a mixed > >ergative/accusative system? How come you use the > >relative case in your example sentence instead of > >the nominative? Does it have something to do with > >the verb 'to see', with the 'subject' being an > >experiencer, or what?
> 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