Re: Imperative mood in ergative languages

On 1/24/06, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> having started P47 project, I met a problem. The lang is intended to have
> three basic types of a simple sentence: absolute (for intransitive verbs),
> ergative (for transitive verbs) and dative (for perceptive verbs). In
> indicative mood it goes smooth. How then it works in imperative? If
> indicative "The hunter killed a wolf" and "The boy hears his father's voice"
> may be glossed as "wolf is.killed hunter-ERG" and "father-GEN voice is.heard
> boy-DAT",
What cases would "wolf" and "voice" be in?
Absolutive?

I'm not sure why you have a passive gloss for the "kill"
verb.  My understanding (probably very
imperfect) of ergative languages is that in such sentences
the ergative case marks the agent and the absolutive case
marks the patient.  Passivization in an ergative
language would seem to suggest that the patient still be in the
absolutive but the agent might could be in some
other case than ergative, possibly in an adpositional
phrase and probably optional (or even mandatorily
deleted?).  E.g.,

wolf-ABS kill man-ERG
The man kills the wolf.

wolf-ABS kill-PSS.
The wolf is killed.

wolf-ABS kill-PSS by man-GEN
The wolf is killed by the man.

>will imperative "Kill the wolf!", "Hear my voice!" be rendered as
> "wolf let.it.be.killed you-ERG", "my voice let.be.heard you-DAT"?
I don't see why not -- but maybe

wolf-ABS kill-IMP you-ERG

would work as well or better.

>IIRC in
> Georgian imperative in fact coincides with aorist, so "Give me some wine!"
> is the same as "You have.given me (some) wine!"
That sounds cool too.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry