Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism

On 20 Jan 2005, at 2.36 pm, # 1 wrote:

>> > I'm not even sure that French can be called "accusative" because
>> there
>> are > no markings or whatever and only the order makes the difference
>>
>> Difference in order is sufficient; accusative doesn't mean there's an
>> accusative case, but rather the subject of a transitive verb is
>> expressed
>> in the same manner as the subject of an intransitive verb, such as in
>> English. (ish, other people can probably explain it better)
>
> but I can give you an example that the three can be the same
>
> Ton chien et moi (your dog and I/me)
>
> "Ton chien et moi allons au parc": your dog and I are going to the park
> "Mon chien et moi grandisson": your dog and I grow
> "Tu aimes ton chien et moi": you love your dog and me
In all cases, you *can* use 'your dog and me' in English, just the
same. Not in formal English mind, but you don't often take dogs to the
park in formal English. In fact, if I used that expression, I would
probably say 'Your dog and me are going to the park' unless I said
something else, like 'I'm taking your dog to the park'.

As for your examples, it's not the case of the pronoun that matters to
French (AFAIK) or English: It's the word order. In English, an
accusative language, compare:
  - The door closes
  - I close the door
in the transitive sentence, the subject comes before the verb. In the
intransitive sentence, the subject still comes before the verb (even
though the door doesn't *do* the closing, closing is done to it). If in
French you say anything at all comparable to (using my understanding of
Christophe's analysis of French):
  - the-door he-closes
  - I-him-close the door
it's the same thing. On the other hand, if it's more like:
  - him-closes the-door
  - I-him-close the-door
it might be debated that French is an ergative (which mark the subject
of intransitives the same as the object of transitives) or split-S
(which mark the subject of intransitives according to whether they are
the patient or the actor) language.


>> > And, contrarily to english, there is not a really solid distinction
>> >
>> nominative-accusative in pronouns, because the pronoun will vary in >
>> form
>> and > position if it is the direct or the indirect object or if the
>> object
>> is an > enumeration with pronouns  Actually, if anyone told you that
>> English has a solid nominative--accusative distinction in pronouns,
>> they
>> were lying. Examples to the contrary include 'It's me', 'John and me
>> went
>> to the milkbar', 'between you and I'. I think also that normally when
>> there's a strong nom./acc. distinction, the pronoun-in-isolation form
>> is
>> the nominative, whereas in English you'd use the so-called object-form
>> (-'Who would?' -'Me!').
>
> but your examples are wrong:
No, they're right. I'm a native English speaker, so I don't know what
I'm talking about, but I can create grammatical utterances :P

'Between you and I' has a long history of use: you can even find it in
Shakespeare! People do it all the time (though I prefer '... you and
me', in general I don't like using I in conjunctions). I think it
probably comes up as a hypercorrection, most people want to say 'Your
dog and me are going to the park', but their mother or primary school
teacher tells them 'actually, your dog and I are going to the park', so
that when they speak to their mother or teacher, they say 'between you
and I', but when they speak to their mates, they say 'John and me are
going to see a film, want to come?' (Irrevelantly, I'd pronounce almost
every second syllable of that as [@]: [dZOn@ mIi@ gOn@ sIi@ fIlm wOn@
kam]).

'John and me went to the milkbar' is usually frowned upon in formal
speech, but in non-formal speech it turns up very frequently (and your
example 'your dog and I are going to the park' sounds almost
ungrammatical to me!).

> you can't say "John and me went to the milkbar" and "between you a I",
> it is
> "John and I" and "between you and me"
>
> that way the distinction is there
Well, sure, if you force it it's there, and in formal English the
argument could be made. But English speakers round the planet don't
always talk like that. We speak colloquial English most of the time. I
was giving real examples and that real people do use (as far as the
grammar's concerned).

>> I think you'll probably find that analyses of spoken French and spoken
>> (informal?) English are both behind the times.
>>
>
> behind the times? what does it mean?
Not keeping up with the current state. The English orthography is
behind the times: it reflects pretty accurately Middle English
pronunciations (of particular dialects). In reality, of course, many
soundchanges, dialect-changes and others have occurred since then (so
that occur~occurrence no longer have similar stressed vowels; or the
standard pronunciation of 'bury' now comes from a different dialect
than the standard spelling).

>> Lines like 'Yes, you were mistaken (like even the French are) by the
>> nature
>> of the French orthography.' remind me of ones very typical of French.
Sorry, I meant to say 'Christophe' there! I'm no good with names.

--
Tristan.

Reply