Re: Nominative vs. Ergative fright!!

En réponse à Matt McLauchlin <matt_mcl@...>:

> I was running my conlang briefly by a former lx prof of mine, and I was
> describing to her how I have a nominative, ergative, and absolutive
> case. In
> case anyone forgets, this is how it works. (I haven't spelled out the
> verb
> conjugations because they're irrelevant.)
>
> Ðami eriter.
> wall-NOM red
> "The wall is red."
>
> Áudridar erit ðamin.
> Audrid-ERG red wall-ABS
> "Audrid makes the wall red."
>
> Ðamin erit.
> wall-ABS red
> "The wall turns red."
>
> Similarly:
>
> Lyoc spa [iat].
> book-NOM up [me-LOC]
> "The book is above [me]."
>
> Gor spa lyocan.
> he-ERG up book-ABS
> "He puts the book up; he lifts the book."
>
> Lyocan spa.
> book-ABS up
> "The book rises."
>
> And finally:
>
> Ger skic clairan.
> she-ERG break window-ABS
> "She breaks the window."
>
> Clairan skic.
> window-ABS break
> "The window breaks."
>
Interesting system. In order to stop people who don't really understand to
criticize your work, maybe you could change the cases names. I would keep
ergative, and would think of "experiencer" for your absolutive (in all your
examples where absolutive appears, it refers to the thing which suffers,
experiences the action, whether it is triggered by something else: "she breaks
the window" or not: "the book rises") and maybe "locative" for your
"nominative", not for any spatial meaning, but because metaphorically the name
seems to fit (I hope you don't have already a "locative" case :) ). I'm sure
there is a name that would be better than the one I proposed, but it seems to
elude me...

>
> I'm a little insecure about this. My case system is my favourite thing
> in
> the whole language and I'm loath to give it up. Should I be calling one
> of
> the cases something different? Or is it irrevocably flawed?
>
Keep it as it is, I don't see any flaw in it. It seems to me like a perfectly
sensible system (but it's true that's I'm quite well known on this list to stand
on the "everything is possible" viewpoint :)) ).

Christophe.