Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism

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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