Re: Help in Determining Asha'ille Typology

----- 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...