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Re: inalienable possession

From:Matt Pearson <mpearson@...>
Date:Tuesday, November 17, 1998, 19:06
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. ------------------------------------ Matt Pearson mpearson@ucla.edu UCLA Linguistics Department 405 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543 ------------------------------------