Re: Books for conlangers

Hello!

On 9/13/05, Thomas Wier <trwier@...> wrote:
> From:    "Julia \"Schnecki\" Simon" <helicula@...>
> > Ah, the Mithun book. :-D I used to recommend stacks of specific
> > grammars to people -- "read this Georgian grammar to learn about
> > ergative,
>
> Nitpick:  you won't learn much about ergative languages from
> Georgian. It has a case that in western languages is called
> "ergative", but that's a misnomer, since there is a class of
> intransitives that also takes that same case ending.
Oh, bugger. :-(

So, what language(s) would you recommend for a first (and maybe second
and third ;) taste of ergative? Unfortunately I only know two
languages that have something resembling ergativity. You have just
given me a reason to remove one of them from my list. (Well, I *would*
simply change "read this Georgian grammar to learn about ergative" to
"read this Georgian grammar for some examples of surprisingly long
verb forms containing interesting consonant clusters", if it weren't
for the Mithun book, which, as I wrote, has something on almost
everything. ;)

The other language is Sumerian, and the main reason why that one's not
anywhere on my aforementioned list is that I haven't seen an easily
readable Sumerian grammar yet. (Hey, I'd even settle for *sort*of*
easily readable...)

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)

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