Re: Conlang-to-body-shape connections

En réponse à Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>:

>
> Oro Mpaa is SVO too.  I would have liked to try out a new
> word order, but SVO is pretty much the only structure that
> works well with my analytical serial verb syntax.  Oro
> Mpaa has no cases, so I guess it doesn't fit the bill of
> the accusative/ergative/active/whatever categories.
>
Cases are not necessary to categorise a language as
accusative/ergative/active/whatever. English for instance has no cases, and yet
is definitely and easily categorised as accusative. Same with French or
Spanish. Accusativity/ergativity is not only a matter of case choice. There is
also what is called "syntactic ergativity" (where is David Bell when we need
him?! He's the syntactic ergativity guru of this list! :) ). An example is the
sentence "he kicked the woman and ran away". In English, it means obviously
that a man kicked a woman, and then ran away. The unexpressed subject of the
intransitive verb is taken to be the subject of the transitive verb. The
language is thus syntactically accusative, since it maps subjects of
intransitive verbs with *subjects* of intransitive verbs. But there are
languages where this same sentence (once translated :)) ) would mean: he kicked
the woman, and *the woman* ran away. In that case, the unexpressed subject of
the intransitive verb is taken to be the *object* of the transitive verb (David
Bell's Amman-Iar does exactly that). So in those languages, the subject of an
intransitive verb is mapped with the *object* of a transitive verb, i.e. the
language is syntactically ergative, and you needn't have any case-marking for
it to be so.

So how does Oro Mpaa behave in that respect?

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.

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