Re: Help in Determining Asha'ille Typology

Arthaey Angosii sikyal:

> This talk about ergativity has made me wonder again what, exactly,
> Asha'ille's typology.  I don't expect it to be anything highly unusual; the
> problem is that I don't understand the various terms and options well
> enough to decide for myself.
>
> Asha'ille is VSO, allows subject/object and/or their conjugations to be
> dropped, and doesn't lexically distinguish between direct and indirect
> objects.  Here are a few example sentences:
> [snip examples]
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.

Your examples make me think accusative, but you need to give different
ones in order to know.

--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"

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