Re: nom/accu pronouns erg/abs everything else

In the last episode, on Mon, 14 May 2007 11:52:58 -0400, Tim Smith
<tim.langsmith@...> wrote:

> Reilly Schlaier wrote:
> > my conlang just morphed in this weird thing (to me)
> > i've got erg/abs alignment everywhere except in my pronouns
> > anyone ever heard of that
> > cause i havent
> > and it seems very odd
> >
> >
>
> This is actually a fairly common pattern.  IIRC, Guugu Yimidhirr (and
> many other Australian languages) have nominative-accusative alignment
> for all pronouns (or at least all personal pronouns) and
> ergative-absolutive alignment for all nouns.
>
> Interestingly enough, it never works the other way; there are, AFAIK,
> no known natlangs with nominative-accusative alignment for nouns and
> ergative-absolutive alignment for pronouns.
>
> This is actually a specific instance of a more general principle.
> There's an animacy hierarchy that seems to be more or less universal
> cross-linguistically, that runs roughly as follows:
>
> 1st and 2nd person pronouns > 3rd person pronouns > animate nouns >
> inanimate nouns
>
> If a given language has more than one alignment pattern, it's always
> nom.-acc. for nominals higher on the hierarchy and erg.-abs. for
> those lower, never the other way around.  The cutoff point can be
> anywhere on the hierarchy.  There can even be two cutoff points, one
> (point A) above which everything is nom.-acc. and another (point B)
> below which everything is erg.-abs.  If point A is above point B, you
> get an area in between where neither alignment applies (thus no case
> marking, or at least none for acc. or erg.); if point A is below
> point B, you get an area of overlap in which there's a tripartite
> system.  I think all of these possibilities exist somewhere among the
> Australian languages.
>
> - Tim (momentarily de-lurking)
This is interesting. Are there any languages which display a split
nom-acc/tripartite system, e.g.

Pronouns = Nom/Acc
Everything Else = Erg/Acc/Nom

or

1 & 2P = Nom/Acc
3P & EE = Erg/Acc/Nom?

Jeff

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