Re: "He opened the door and he (same referent) left the room"

--- Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
> En réponse à Trebor Jung :
>
>
> >How do natlangs handle sentences like in the
> subject?
>
> I have a few questions about how to handle such
sentences as in the subject in my conlang.
 First, are there languages which use purely ergative
syntax, or do they all have some accusative
tendencies?
 Second, my conlang has absolute/ergative case marking
but uses a lot of thematic/topic-comment sentence
structures. Should co-reference be governed by the
absolute argument or by the topic, whether the topic
is absolute or not?
 I have thought about adding 4th and 5th persons in
the pronoun paradigm, do natlangs ever mark 4th and
5th person in the verb? Most that I've seen leave
anything beyond 3rd person up to the prnouns proper. I
figure if I could use such marking I could avoid the
whole issue.

 It seems whenever I post to the list, it's to ask a
question. I keep telling myself to contribute more,
but my knowledge of linguistics is pretty shaky. So
forgive me for being a leech.
                            Thanks Always,
                                         Travis

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