Re: Ergativity Question

Caleb Hines wrote:
> Actually, I stumbled upon this description of Tagalog, which has some
> elements similar to what I was trying to describe:
> http://www.atoni.com/dila/languages/LanguageFacts/Tagalog.htm
>
> What it calls "Objective voice" and "Agentive Voice" match what I was
> previously calling "Passive Voice" and "Active Voice".
>
You are correct there.  The only caveat is that Tag. OV might not
necessarily have to be translated with an Engl. passive.

Similar though different: consider the Indonesian relative clause structure,
where the Rel.Pronoun _must_ be the subject of its verb:

That's the book that John is reading = Itulah buku yang dibaca (oleh) John =
lit. that-focus book REL PASSIVE-read (by) John -- where dibaca is a marked
passive (di-), and John is marked (by position and optionally with the
preposition oleh 'by') as the agent. It is unnecessary (even awkward) to
translate this literally with an Engl. passive.

I'd comment on the rest of your post, but I'm not up on "antipassive".
Suffice to say, I don't think your language really exhibits ergativity.

You asked for an example of a trans. verb that _must_ have an object-- how
about "make"? It requires both an agent and a patient; i.e. you can't answer
"What are you doing?" with "I'm making." Slightly different, but also
requiring an object, is "hear" (technically, instead of "agent", it has
"experiencer"); again, -- Q. What are you doing? A. I'm hearing -- isn't
grammatical English.