Re: Active, Was: Help with grammar terms

Vasiliy Chernov wrote:

> > I think "Hettan" might be more commonly referred to in English as
> > "Hittite."
>
> Yes, of course. I'm sorry... :o Isn't it also spelled 'Hettite' sometimes?
Not to my knowledge, but that's very similar to what it is in German
(Hehtitisch or something like that -- I can never quite remember the
spelling)

>
> As Lars already said, stadialists maintain that the mainstream route
> of development was nominative < ergative < active (which they often
> refer to as 'stages'), all of them stemming from some stage which did not
> distinguish roles at all.
Fascinating.  I had heard of this sort of thing at second hand, from
people (e.g. Winifred Lehmann) who were arguing (following Gam. & Iv.)
that PIE or Proto-Indo-Hittite was an active language, but I had no
idea it came from a big theory of language evolution.

> One reason for me to have little sympathy with stadialists is how they
> treat obvious examples of the opposite direction of development. For
> instance, they insist that modern Indo-Aryan languages (mostly ergative,
> but descending from the nominative Sanskrit) are only 'formally', but not
> 'truly' ergative. One of the favorite stadialist arguments is that
> most Indo-Aryan langs have causative, which (in their opinion) a 'truly
> ergative' language should not have.
Oh heavens.  Kind of like the notion that ergativity is somehow an
ephemeral/trivial characteristic of a language if, despite ergative
case marking, its syntax sometimes follows accusative-language
patterns, e.g. absolutives with intransitives follow the same patterns
as ergatives with transitives.

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