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Re: Help in Determining Asha'ille Typology

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Thursday, August 7, 2003, 18:37
----- Original Message -----
From: "JS Bangs" <jaspax@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 6:22 PM
Subject: Re: Help in Determining Asha'ille Typology


> Joe sikyal: > > > > The four remaining possible groupings are these: > > > > > > A: 1, B: 2,3,4 = ergative > > > (A is ergative, B is absolutive) > > > > > > A: 1,3,4, B: 2 = accusative > > > (A is nominative, B is accusative) > > > > > > A: 1,3, B: 2,4 = active > > > (A is agentive, B is patientive) > > > > > > A: 1,4, B: 2,3 = ???? > > > > > > This last one is what Andreas talked about. However, we should notice
that
> > > this groups the points that have nothing in common together, which is > > > completely counter-intuitive and unlikely. Andreas' Law of Freaks
demands
> > > that some language does it, but I don't know what it is. > > > > > > Having just argued against Andreas' side, I would also like to argue for > > it - > > > > Imagine a language, Case 1 is marked by -s, Case 2 by -n, Case 3 by -m
and
> > Case 4 by -z. Now imagine, due to phonological changes, -z and -s merge > > into -z, and -m and -n merge into -n. Lets call 1 and 4, A, 2 and 3, B. > > [snip examples] > > Of course, phonological merger can make anything happen. Something rather > similar happened in Old French, where nom sg and acc pl were marked by -s, > and nom pl and acc sg were marked by -0 for a while. But such a system is > typologically unstable, and tends to collapse rather quickly. > > I do note that your system requires 4 separate markers for each of the > loci mentioned above, and AFAIK this doesn't happen in any natlang.
Unstable, perhaps, but it means that such a system will exist for a certain amount of time(provided, of course, such changes happen), and, as such, must be counted as valid. And as to the existence of four direct cases(by which I mean subjects and direct objects), well, I would be very surprised if it didn't happen somewhere. It seems quite sensible to me...