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Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Friday, January 21, 2005, 17:59
Isaac wrote:
> Thomas R. Wier wrote: > > Well, for starters, Georgian isn't an ergative language -- it's > > split-S in its nominal morphology, and mostly nom/acc in its syntax. > > I know it, in theory. But for practical purposes one may treat phrase > constructions in aorist as a typical ergative one. And don't forget about > inverse subject marking on some verb forms. I mean prefixes like m-, g-, gv- > denoting subject. Anyway, I know too little Georgian to argue with a > specialist <no sarcasm meant>.
But that's not true! That's *precisely* where Georgian most evinces split-S characteristics! Look, they're four conjugations, and three series: 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Present Nom-Dat-(Dat) Nom Nom Dat-(Nom) Aorist Erg-Nom-(Dat) Nom Erg Dat-(Nom) Evidential Dat-Nom Nom Dat Dat-(Nom) The first conj. is mostly transitive, and the second and third are basically intransitive. The crux of the matter is, the one making it impossible for Georgian to be ergative, is that there are two conjugations of intransitive predicates *that behave differently*, and one behaves like subjects of transitives. As for the inversion system, that has solid thematic reasons in the fourth conjugation, and the perfective-evidential actually has *fluid-S* syntax.
> > Secondly, Johanna Nichols in her book _Linguistic Diversity through > > Space and Time_ says that in fact quite the opposite tends to be the > > case: languages said to have an ergative alignment favor dependent > > marking, and thus tend *not* to mark both arguments on the verb. > > Ok. Taken into consideration. But a tendency (even not a universal) > is not a law, is it? ;)
No, but it's a strong tendency. So, if the goal is to make something plausible linguistically, to the extent that one follows universal tendencies, one achieves that goal.
> > Wishram and Tzutujil > > A short info on geography and genealogy, please. I have not found these > names in my Linguistic Encyclopaedical Dictionary.
Wishram is a Penutian language spoken in north central Oregon and southern Washington state in the US. Tzutujil is a Mayan language spoken in Guatamala. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637

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Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...>