Re: ergative? I don't know...

On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:

> 'experience' is the state were you are at a certain stage of a process.
> It's like you step outside time. You don't refer to the different stages
> of process in time (aspective vision), but to the state in comparison to
> other states (unaspective vision). People in active systems find it
> difficult to stop referring to process in a phrase. So they go way round
> and think : what does embody a state outside time ? A 'noun'. So they
> use the noun as an adjective (as Latins did : 'bonus' = 'the good one' >
> 'good' as an adjective)
I'm having a hard time understanding how this illustrates an active
system.  Is Latin an active language simply because it uses substantive
adjectives?  German was doing this way back when, and we do it still, only
in the plural.  The poor.   How does this prove activeness?


 or as part of a compound locution with a verb of
> state : 'to be good'.  The 'dative-experiencer' case discussed a few
> posts earlier is a way to make one agent refer to state ('experience')
> while the predicate still refers to process.
You mean the other way around?  Me thynketh thaet soth is...  "that seems
to me to be true."  The predicate is the state "being true" and the verb
and dative "subject" is the process.  Except that you identify state with
experience.  This is not clear, or I am really misunderstanding you.

But it's very difficult for
> people speaking nom/acc or split ergative systems to figure that out.
If I knew what you were expressing I could figure it out.

> Pure ergative and age/pat systems have no trouble referring to
> 'experience' because absolutive case precisely originately refers to
> states like 'to-be-cut', and so do either agent or patient depending on
> the predicate they refer to.
Unclear.

>
> Mathias
So is it utterly off the mark to identify my "volitional/non-volitional"
case system in Teonaht (which I see as different forms of nominative) with
active systems?

T. has a whole host of ni (non-volitional intransitive) verbs that are
made from states (actually adjectives--or which furnish adjectives):  "to
be present," "to be blue," "to be dead," "to be wounded,"  etc.

For some reason, I am still casting about for a notch to fit this into.
I'd like to know of natlangs that do what T. does.  i.e., maintain a basic
nominative/accusative structure and still make distinctions between
volition and non volition.

Maybe I SHOULD develop a dative form of the possessive.

Sally
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Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html

Rin euab ouarjo vopy vytssema tohda uo zef:
ar al aippara brottwav; ad kemban aril yllefo
brotwav fenom; vybbrysan brotwav an; he ad
edirmerem brotwav kronom.

"A cat and a man are not all that different.
Both are on my bed; both lay their head on their
arm; both have mustaches; both purr when they
sleep."
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