Re: Comments? Applicative and Noun Incorporation
| From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, April 14, 2002, 4:05 |
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David Peterson wrote:
> Are there any natural language that display either split-ergativity
> in something other than present/past tense, or are completely ergative?
Sure. Dyirbal uses nominative/accusative with first and second person
pronouns, and ergative/absolutive with other 3rd person pronouns and
nouns (at least, I think that's where the division is; at any rate, it's
by person, rather than tense), and there are plenty of languages that
*only* have ergative/absolutive marking on nouns. Altho, syntactically,
there's usually some nominative/accusative distinctions. The Grey
Wizard can explain it better than me.
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