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Questions about ergativity

From:# 1 <salut_vous_autre@...>
Date:Sunday, January 23, 2005, 6:32
I have somethig to ask about ergativity I'm still not sure to understand

An ergative language will have the same case for the subject of intransitive
phrase and for the object and another for the subject of transitive phrases

but if a transitive sentence takes the form SVO

or EVA (Ergative and Aboslutive)

will the intransitive sentence take the form AV or VA? or maybe they are
both existant in different languages

And with case-marking they could be both possible in a single language


And if a language takes a form like SOV, OSV, VSO or VOS (anything were
subject and object are next of each other)

if there are no case-marking, it is impossible to know, in an intransitive
sentence, if the argument is absolutive or nominative because they would
both take the same position before or after the verb


Can someone give me informations about words order's differences in ergative
languages?


I've read that Abkhaz doesn't have any case marking but that the word order
shows it is ergative but I've been unable to find that word order

do they mean that the intransitive subject is placed at the same place that
the transitive object?

like tran: SVO, intran: VS = ergative
     tran: SVO, intran: SV = nominative

Would it mean that if there's no case marking the ergativity or the
nominativity(~) is only indicated by the intransitive word order?


-Max