Re: Nominative vs. Ergative fright!!

Matt McLauchlin wrote:

[in a slightly rearranged order]

>Anyway, I was describing this to her, and she muttered something about
>"going against UG" and "nominative and ergative at the same time" and then
>had to go.
That really depends on what theory of UG she assumes. :-)

Seriously, nominative and ergative are not incompatible within a
language.  Many ergative languages have a nominative portion -- for
instance, Warlpiri has ergative-absolutive for nouns but
nominative-accusative for pronouns.  Hindi uses ergative in one aspect and
nominative in another (it revolves around the perfective, but at this time
in the morning I don't remember which goes where).  Nez Pierce has
nominative when there is also verbal agreement and ergative if there is
not, and a similar situation holding between absolutive (called "objective"
in the Nez Pierce literature) and accusative.

What is odd in your system is the way you chose to treat the difference
between nominative and ergative.  In all case systems I've seen
(accusative, ergative, active, and odds ones like Algonquin langs), your
first and third examples below should have the same marking for the subjects.

>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."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the case system seems to be one where you
assign: Nominative with stative verb; Ergative-Absolute to a transitive
verb (actually, both your examples look like causative verbs not simply
transitives); and Absolutive to a change-of-state verb.

>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?
Since it's an artlang, by default it cannot be "flawed", except according
to your aesthetics.  If you want to stick with UG theory, the case system
should probably be changed, but if not, then your system is fine.  As I've
told a couple people I've talked to privately, I'm not a fan of changing
conlangs just to fit linguistic theory.  There is just too much that theory
cannot handle right now, and there are portions of it that are IMNSHO dead
wrong.


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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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