Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism

>
> BTW---if a language forms everything with clitics (like English seems
> to want to), does it necessarily count as isolating or agglutinative or
> something, or can it be whatever it darn well feels like based on other
> aspects?
Typically, clitics are one step on the path of grammaticalization from
independent words (ie prepositions, pronouns etc) to affixes. Some
languages stick half way of course, but it's possible that English will
keep progressing in the way it's been going recently, and turn its
clitics into affixes eventually, in which case it won't really be
isolating anymore. :) As for whether it's isolating or not now... that's
a difficult question really (for me, anyway). :) As I said, clitics are
kindof half way.