Re: Help in Determining Asha'ille Typology

On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 12:34:00PM -0700, JS Bangs wrote:
[snip]
> 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.
[snip]

Bizarre... according to these three specific examples, Ebisedian would
qualify as an ergative language: for (1), you'd have "I(rcp) eat
food(cvy)"; for (2), you'd have "I(cvy) run", for (3), you have "I(cvy)
fall".

But this is merely a case of false analogy; if another verb were used in
(1), say "I looked at the food", then the nouns would be marked "I(org)
look food(rcp)". Likewise, if the verb in (2) is something like "to
dream", you'd have "I(org) dream".


T

--
I see that you JS got Bach.

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