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

Sally Caves wrote:
> Nik, I wonder if you could address the same question I have about Teonaht
> ("is Teonaht active"?).  In my "What's Teonaht Page" I label T. as
> basically an Accusative language with a split Nominative, however, and
> "some active tendencies."  Nobody has ever really endorsed this
> identification--or condemned it either... or maybe I have an utterly
> faulty memory--but it does exactly what Clinton is describing above.
> Basically it makes a distinction between agent and participant,
Okay, if I understand correctly, participant is *never* object, right?

> So: the man who falls
> by accident is structured as a nominative differently than the man who is
> a skydiver, or Lucifer who falls to Hell (I'm assuming, like Milton, that
> Satan was in charge of his sin against God).
[Snippage]
>         This makes for a host of perception verbs like:
>
>                 kerem, "look, see deliberately,"
>                 kened, "see passively."
>
>                 ouarem,  "listen"
>                 ouaned,  "hear passively."
>
>                 etc.
[Snippage]
> So does this system incorporate "active language" tendencies?
I think that it should be called "the Teonaht System".  ;-)  It's
certainly an interesting system, unique as far as I know.  It certainly
makes the distinctions made by active languages.  I don't know what
you'd call it.  Perhaps a nominative-accusative language with an extra
non-volitional subject case.  I think that you're "split-nominative" is
as good as any other term.  If you want to be a little more precise,
perhaps you could  call it something like "nominative-accusative with
volitionality" or something like that, i.e., it's nominative-accusative,
but also distinguishes volition.

And I love the distinctions made by those verbs!

--
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was hanged." - Irish proverb
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