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Re: Imperative mood in ergative languages

From:Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 25, 2006, 9:14
Thanks to everybody who contibuted to this thread. I see I have confused
people by mixing true glosses and their English approximations.
The true gloss should be "wolf-ABS kill hunter-ERG", subconsciously
perceived as "wolf is.killed by.hunter" (at least in my aberrated brains)...
Surely I know how ergative works (at least in indicative and subjunctive),
and I know there is no true passive there, and that antipassive may be used
to reduce valency. Not the question of passiveness was the issue. The real
issue was about imperative. But now I see it looks as if there is no
standard procedure for solving the issue, and it differs in various ergative
langusges. Very good! I think I'll stick to the Georgian variant.

-- Yitzik
OT: Yes, it was up to -27C here. Now it only -15C, and it is much better...