Re: nom/accu pronouns erg/abs everything else

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)

Reply