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Re: Fluid-S pivot in Old Albic

From:Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
Date:Thursday, August 11, 2005, 15:43
Hallo!

Thomas Wier wrote:

> Joerg wrote: > > > 1.) Are you aware of any natlangs that have any parts of Old Albic's > > > system? > > > > Of the languages I know of, Georgian seems to come closest to it > > (I even seem to remember reading about a fluid-S pivot in Georgian, > > but I am not sure) > > It's a little more complicated than that in Georgian. In the present > and aorist series, there is a standard accusative pivot: intransitives > always obligatorily corefer with the agent of a transitive clause. > The trick is in the perfect series, where indeed there seems to be > a fluid-S pivot.
Yes; this is how I remember it as well.
> What's more, it seems to be sensitive to discourse > structure, since when you focus the object to OSV order, suddenly > only an accusative pivot (which is weird, since if it were just > pragmatically determined you'd expect that focusing the object would > force a Split-S rather than Fluid-S pivot).
Interesting!
> So, I would say that > the Georgian facts are not so close. I seem to vaguely remember that > Acehnese has some odd pivot facts like this; check out Yehuda Falk's > _Explaining Subjecthood_ (which is available for free in PDF format > on his website).
Thanks!
> As far as I know, no one but me has done research on Georgian pivots, > so I'm your likely source on that factoid.
Yes. It was you, and I also remember that you wrote that the pivot is fluid-S only in the perfect series, while being accusative in the present and aorist series. Greetings, Jörg.