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

Quoting Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>:

> On Monday, February 23, 2004, at 03:18  PM, 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? What
> > about active, tripartite, clairvoyant and MRL languages - do they too
> > more or
> > less universally contain bits of accusativity?
>
>
> Could you (or anyone else) remind me (and i'm sure someone else out
> there has forgotten too :P) what are tripartite, clairvoyant, and MRL
> (Monster Raving Looney?) type languages?
Tripartite: Treating S (intransitive subject), A (transitive subject) and P
(transitive object) all different, typically by having three different cases
for them.

Clairvoyant: Treating, S, A and P all the same, relying on context to tell who
does whatever is being done to whom.

Monster Raving Loony (MRL): Treating A and P the same, but marking S
differently.

There are also hierarchical systems, in which A and P are not treated
differently syntactically or morphologically, but you have an animacy
hierarchy for nouns and pronouns, so that the argument higher in the hierarchy
is automatically considerd to be the A. To express "the water drank the man"
you have to put the verb in a special reverse voice.

                                                    Andreas

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