Re: Evolution of Applicatives

By 'applicative', I assume you mean a structure like
'I on-slept the mat' for 'I slept on the mat'? As I
understand it, the applicative in many languages is
carried out by dropping the valency of a sentence by
one through making the complement a direct object, and
encoding any specific information relevant to the
complement on the verb (or something like that).

Structures that faintly resemble the applicative
appear in German, thanks to the wonky flip-flopping of
word order in certain clauses:

"Ich habe die Bandagen mir abgezogen."
"I have the.PLU bandages me.DAT off-pulled."
"I pulled the bandages off from me."

But then again, to analyze that sentence as an
applicative would be very contrived indeed. However,
it's concievable that a simple phrase like 'I slept on
the mat' could, over time, shift its word order around
a bit and be reanalyzed as 'I on-slept the mat'. It's
possible, certainly, but I haven't seen it happen in
any language I know.

As for ergative languages with applicatives, I wonder
how that could happen. My conlang, Gi-nàin, is a
fluid-S language with an applicative, which might be
close enough to count:

"mara-s'a a-t e-kias-se-i"
boat.<patient> I/you.<agent> at.stepped
"I/You stepped into _the boat_."

Gi-nàin generally only uses the applicative in
situations like these, where it has to break with its
typical SOV word order to emphasize a specific element
(in this case, the boat, hence the underscoring).

The non-applicative equivalent, "mara-je a-t
kias-se-i" doesn't suggest movement into the boat;
i.e., it would be parsed as 'I stepped _at_ the boat',
a sentence that would make almost no sense in Gi-nàin.

I know Fablo David Flores has the applicative in at
least one of his conlangs, or at least, knows more
about the valency operations than I do.

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