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

Sally Caves wrote:
>         I thought I had understood this, but I guess I'm still
>         operating under a misconception about S.  The term "S"
>         HAS TO MEAN INTRANSITIVE SUBJECT, doesn't it?
[Snippage, and moving]
>         Does [S] have any real status outside of its
>         recognition as a "place holder" by linguists?
>
Yes.  S, A, & P are the three basic, core, arguments.  S is the subject
of an intransitive verb, A is agent, the subject of a transitive verb,
while P is patient, the object of a transitive verb.  Accusative
languages make no distinction between S & A, while distinguishing P.
Ergative languages, on the other hand, (theoretically) make no
distinction between S & P, while distinguishing A (even the most
ergative language, however, has some cases where P is treated
differently than S & A, which are treated identically).

>         The question then remains:  if that is what S means, then
>         how is *S* functioning in nom/accusative languages?  It
>         would seem that S is non-existent in these, if NO distinction
>         is made between transitive and intransitive subjects.
It's not non-existent, but it is treated the same as an A, just as
ergative languages fail to distinguish S & P.

>                 Teonaht is definitely tripartite in its use of
>                 articles to define these argument types:
>
>                         Le zef, li zef, and il zef
>                         The man, (agent) the man (participant)
>                         and the man (object or patient)
That's not tripartite in the usual sense.  Le zef and li zef cut up S &
A, while il is P.  To be truly tripartite, _le zef_ could only apply to
A, that is, the subject of a transitive verb, while _li zef_ could only
be for intransitive verbs, while Teonaht allows some intranstive verbs
to take _le zef_, and some to take _li zef_, according to your webpage.
And it also says that some transitive verbs can take _il zef_.

> We do know that English underwent a great
> deal of facelifting in the eighteenth century, so that some basic rules
> about double negatives and many other aspects of "correct grammar" were
> agreed upon and doctored.
Good point, even if those forms haven't completely disappeared.

> In
> the thirteenth century, the "abnormal sentence," never spoken by the
> populace, was the norm in writing.  It was a fad and it disappeared.
What is the "abnormal sentence"?

> One thing I know for sure about Teonaht is that it is literate... and
> bends compliantly to literate embellishment (except in the case of its
> pronouns).
I think that a few features of Watya'iya`isa are the result of that.
Many liguists (okay, imaginary linguists :-)) think that the pitch
system of W. was borrowed from Ca'ka`ta, a language which was once
influential in their area, until the Nif (the speakers of Tarni'f)
conquered their area.  They didn't live long enough under the Nif to
acquire more than a technical vocabulary, and lots of proper names.
There's a constant debate over whether the use of Tarni'f names are
noble or evil, there are those who name their children with good W.
names, and others who use Tarni'f elements in naming their children, and
a few combinations.  I don't have any examples.

> No one knows exactly why the London dialect
> threw out perfectly good _hem_ and _hir_ and adopted the Northern
> variations: _them_ and _their_.
Probably due to the ambiguity between _hir_ and _her_, which were either
almost homophones, or actually were homophones, I'm not sure.  _Hem_ and
_him_ must've sounded similar as well.  Hadn't the word for _they_
already merged with _she_?

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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