Re: inalienable possession

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

>>The ergative can be used with inanimates, it's just less common.  "The
>>disease killed him", disease is inanimate, but it would be ergative, or
>>better yet "The rock crushed his head when it fell on him", rock would
>>be ergative, yet it's still ergative.  It's just that ergative is
>>*usually* animate.
>
>        No, I meant: _in PL_, the conlang I'm currently inventing, ergative
>is used _only_ for animates, as it has a meaning of volitionality. It is
>true that in most natlangs, ergative is used also with inanimates (but I
>know ergative natlangs that can't use ergative with inanimates, they use an
>oblique case for an inanimate subject of a transitive verb. It's generally
>the same kind of langs where the order of the participants is subordonned to
>the animation of those participants).
In some ergative languages (I'm thinking especially of Australian languages)
the ergative and the instrumental are homophonous, and can be considered
a single case form.  Participants marked by this case are interpreted as
agents if animate, and instruments if inanimate:

        John-ERG  knife-ERG  chicken-ABS  killed
        "John killed the chicken with the knife"

Tokana, it seems, is like PL in that the ergative case is reserved for
volitional animates.  Non-volitional and/or inanimate participants are
marked with the instrumental case:

        Na       Tsion     mukteh      hitol
        the-Erg  John-Erg  closed-the  door-Abs
        "John closed the door (on purpose)"

        Inan      Tsionne    mukteh      hitol
        the-Inst  John-Inst  closed-the  door-Abs
        "John closed the door (accidentally)"

        Itan      suhune     mukteh      hitol
        the-Inst  wind-Inst  closed-the  door-Abs
        "The wind closed the door"

Ergative case is also used in noun phrases to mark animate possessors.
Inanimate 'possessors' take the dative case:

        te   halmana       Tsion
        the  book-the-Erg  John-Erg
        "John's book"

        te   sathahi       katiai
        the  roof-the-Dat  house-Dat
        "the roof of the house"

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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