Re: Vocab #4 (Uatakassi)

Christopher B Wright wrote:
>
> <Instrumental is used as the case of demoted absolutives in antipassive
> and dative-object constructions.
> Antipassive was used much more in LU.  In later imperial times, it came
> to be obligatory in transitive verbs, causing the instrumental to become
> an accusative case, and the absolutive a nominative, with s- being a
> transitivity marker.  But, in early imperial times it was still a true
> voice.>
>
> Care to explain this gobbledygook? At least to explain the special terms.
Well, I'm not sure how much you know, so forgive me if I repeat what you
already know.

Some languages use what it known as _ergative_ marking, as opposed to
_accusative_.  In an ergative system, there is a case called _ergative_
which is used for the subject of a TRANSITIVE verb, and another case
called _absolutive_ which is used as the subject of an INTRANSITIVE verb
or the OBJECT of a transitive verb.  So, for example:

The ball-absolutive fell
The man-ergative dropped the ball-absolutive

(I'm slighty simplifying the matter, it's more than a simple either/or
case, ergativity can be restricted to case marking, or it can show up in
the syntax)

Now, many ergative languages have a special voice called "antipassive".
This is analogous to the passive in accusative languages.  The
antipassive voice is used to make the ergative noun into an absolutive.
Just as accusative languages then require some special marking for the
agent of a passive verb (e.g., "the ball was dropped BY THE MAN"), the
patient must be marked by some special case in an antipassive
construction, in the case of Uatakassi, the instrumental is used.  So,
for example:
Active: The man-ergative dropped the ball-absolutive
Antipassive: The man-absolutive dropped-antipassive the
ball-instrumental.

Now, in late imperial times, Low Uatakassi (technically its successor
_Lachuju_ "soldierspeak"), overused the antipassive to the point where
it was always used in transitive sentences, thus:
The ball-absolutive fell
The man-absolutive dropped-"antipassive" the ball-instrumental

Which means that the absolutive now acts just like a nominative in an
accusative language, while the instrumental acts as an accusative (in
fact, its original function of showing "by means of" was supplanted by a
different case), and the antipassive marker is now used on all
transitive verbs.  Thus, it came to be reanalyzed as simply indicating
that the verb in question is transitive.

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