Re: Copulas

Carlos Thompson wrote:

>Kristian Jensen wrote:
>
>> Edward Heil wrote:
>> >
>> >I haven't done any fully formed conlangs yet, but how can you
>> >resist ergatives once you know about them?  I mean, come ON!
>> >They are JUST SO COOL!
>>
>> And how can one resist *NOT* having the distinction between
>> ergative and nominative. I mean, come ON! Trigger languages with
>> only one core argument are even cooler!! 8-)
>
>Would Chleweyish be a trigger language?  some verbs accept two or
>more arguments but it is semantics, not grammar, the one that tells
>of those two subjects which is agent and which is pacient.  If you
>want to be unambiguous no verb should have two or more subjects.
What I'd feel is the most important thing for you to figure out to
whether Chleweyish is a trigger language is to determine whether
Chleweyish has only one *CORE* argument in all sentence
constructions. You can have as many arguments as you want, but only
one core argument if it were a trigger language by my definition.
You also have to figure out what kind of construction dominates.

Core arguments are the arguments (or participants) that are required
in a sentence. For instance, the verb "give" is a trivalent verb
requiring three core arguments in: "John gave Marsha a book". The
verb "kill" is a divalent verb requiring only two core arguments in:
"John killed a lion". There are of course some verbs whose valency
requires only one argument, univalent verbs like "run" in: "Marsha
ran".

Thus, according to my definition of a trigger language, only
univalent verbs occur. But that is stretching it a little. A better
description would be that nominal predicates dominate, i.e.,
constructions like: "John is the giver of a book to Marsha", "Marsha
is John's recipient of a book", "The book is John's donation to
Marsha", "John is the killer of a lion", "The lion is the victim of
John", and "Marsha is a runner". All these sentences also only have
one core argument - the univalent verb being "to be".

>I don't know either if Hangkerimce is ergative or what... when I
>post the standard phrase construction I hope it can be solved.
Then post it! 8-)

It is ergative if the subject of a univalent verb is in the same
case as the most patient-like argument of a divalent verb. It is
nominative if the subject of a univalent verb is in the same case as
the most agent-like argument of a divalent verb. But you could also
have a mixed system of nominative and ergative. You might even have
an active system where the most agent-like and most patient-like
arguments are explicitly marked. I think Matt's Tokana and Sally's
Teonaht is like that. You could also have a trigger system as
described above - I think Boreanesian is like that 8-)))).

-kristian 8-)