Nik wrote:
> It depends on the language. In some, nouns are marked
> absolutive/ergative, while everything else (including agreement) is
> nom/acc. In others, the agreement is with the absolutive.
Interesting. For some reason I've never thought of the agreement.
> In those
> cases, there's usually an anti-passive that turns the ergative into an
> absolutive, analogous to the function of passive. It's thus used when
> there's no object mentioned (John is writing) or when the focus is on
> John for whatever reason.
And don't forget coordination. As Jens Persson wrote in another
mail. If you want to leave out the subject of the second clause in:
"I shot the guard and fell." (meaning: "I fell")
you would have to use an antipassive construction with the transitive
object in an oblique case (OBL), turning the transitive subject (A)
into an intransitive one (S):
"I.ABS shot.ANTIPASSIVE the guard.OBL [I.ABS] and fell."
Now the left-out intransitive subject has the same S-function as
the transitive subject of the first clause ('I').
Otherwise it would mean "I shot the guard and *he* fell" if
you leave out the subject of the second clause:
"I.ERG shot the guard.ABS and [he.ABS] fell."
Daniel