Re: CONLANG Digest - 21 Feb 2004 to 22 Feb 2004 (#2004-52)

If I may ask: isn't it remarkable that languages
presented as examples for ergativity (Basque, Eskimo,
Georgian, Dyirbal...) nearly always seem to be used in
very far-off, hidden and hardly reachable places,
seeming to indicate that these people had little
contact with other ones ?

Or maybe one could find couter-examples showing that
also accusative languages are spoken in such places ?

--- Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> Quoting John Quijada <jq_ithkuil@...>:
>
> > Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > >PS If I've got it right, all ergative languages
> are really split-ergative,
> > but
> > >plenty of accusative languages have only the
> faintest traces of ergativity
> > >(like the -ee suffix in English). If so, it would
> seem to suggest that
> > >accusativity, for some reason, is the "default"
> for human language, yes?
> >
> > ------
> > In _Ergativity_ (1994) Dixon disagrees with you
> here.
>
> I'm not really arguing any point here - merely
> trying to make sense of what
> I've been told.
>

=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

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