Re: Help in Determining Asha'ille Typology

Quoting JS Bangs <jaspax@...>:

> These are the wrong kind of examples to use for deciding whether a
> language is accusative, ergative, or active. These terms have to do with
> the marking of arguments to a verb and transitivity, so we'd need to see
> some examples of that. Can you post translations of these three sentences:
>
> 1) I eat food.
> 2) I run.
> 3) I fall.
>
> In most general terms:
>
> An accusative language is one in which "I" in all three sentences is
> marked the same (nominative), while "food" is marked differently
> (accusative).
>
> An ergative language is one in which "food" from (1) and "I" from (2) and
> (3) are marked the same (absolutive), while "I" from (1) is marked
> differently (ergative).
>
> An active language is one in which "I" from (1) and (2) is marked the same
> (agentive), while "food" and "I" from (3) are marked the same
> (patientive). This is subject to a lot of language-specific variation,
> though, so beware.
What would we call a language that marks "I" from (1) the same as "I" in (3),
and "I" in (2) the same as "food" in (1)? Beyond weird, that is.

                                                       Andreas

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