Re: Ergativity Question

From:    Caleb Hines <cph9fa@...>
> I'm pretty sure I understand the basics of what an ergative/absolutive
> language is (as opposed to a nominative/accusative one), but I've got a
> question. Would it make sense for a language to be ergative/absolutive in
> the passive voice, but nominative/accusative in the active voice? Are there
> any example natlangs or conlangs that do this? It's one possible system I'm
> considering for Akathanu (which is kinda funny, considering that Akathanu
> doesn't even really have verbs, except an extended form of the copula).
It depends on what you mean by "passive".  In most systems that
I'm familiar with, the "passive" is fundamentally characterized
by demoting the agent somehow.  This also usually implies
detransitivization, but not always.  Now, since ergativity is
defined as treating the single argument of intransitive verbs the
same as the patient of transitive verbs (by whatever criterion), it's
not clear to me how you have ergative patterning with passives,
but not other intransitives, and still remain "ergative". That is,
if passivization is genuinely detransitivizing, it would
effectively create two classes of intransitives.  On the one hand,
you'd have regular intransitives, which are used when either an agent
or patient argument is being focused on (i.e., active voice), and
these intransitives' arguments are treated the same as the agent
of  transitives. On the other hand, you've have special passivized
intransitives, whose single argument would pattern like the patient
of transitives.  And the problem with that is that it's a perfect
example of a split-S system (aka active-stative), and thus not
ergative at all.

(Now, I'm wondering if you could get around this by having a passive
that demotes the agent, but still requires both arguments.  I'm not
sure how this would be different from an inverse system such as are
found in some Algonquian languages, and thus also not ergative.)

Another way of answering your question is that Bob Dixon's book
_Ergativity_ (the 1994 version, not his earlier paper) does not
mention any splits by voice -- only by tense, aspect, or mood
(of those not conditioned solely by semantic properties of the
arguments).  While this book is not the Bible of Ergativity, it
is IMHO reasonable to call it at least the Talmud, or Hadith, of
the phenomenon.

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