Re: Ergativity Question

Thomas R. Wier wrote at 2004-08-11 00:48:37 (-0500)
 > From:    Caleb Hines <cph9fa@...>
 > > Labile? Now there's a term they don't teach in Language Arts 101!
 > > But I can't seem to think of any verbs that are only
 > > transitive. Could you give a good example, so I can see if my
 > > non-transitive system can handle it?
 >
 > Sure.  There are thousands of them.  Here's a good minimal triplet:
 >
 > Purely intransitive:   dine.    "I dined", *"I dined the food"
 > Labile:                eat      "I ate" "I ate the food"
 > Purely transitive:     devour   *"I devoured", "I devoured the food"
 >

Errr... You're the linguist here, but that's not what I understand by
the term "labile verb".  I've always understood it as referring
exclusively to those verbs which may be used transitively or
intransitively such that the intransitive subject refers to the same
role as the transitive object; e.g.  "I broke the bottle"/"The bottle
broke".  _Describing Morphosyntax_ appears to agree with me (it calls
them "middle verbs" for obvious reasons).  Clearly "eat" is not such a
verb.

Are you sure there's an established usage of "labile verb" to cover
_all_ verbs that can be transitive or intransitive?  Maybe someone
could look it up in Trask?

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