Re: Re; Ergativity

Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:

> Tim May scripsit:
> > Something which has occurred to me as a more reliably ergative
> > construction in English is the noun phrase "<verb>ing of <noun>",
> > referring to an event.  It seems to me that <noun> is always the S or
> > P of <verb>.  I hesitate to mention this as many examples sound
> > awkward, particularly with intransitive verbs, but I think the meaning
> > is unambiguous even in these cases.
>
> There's a Christmas carol, "The Holly and the Ivy", whose chorus goes:
>
>         Oh, the rising of the Sun,
>         And the running of the deer;
>         The playing of the merry organ,
>         Sweet singing in the choir.
>
> "Sun" is S, "organ" is P, but I can't see how "deer" can be anything but A,
> unless "running" here means "hunting" or some such.
That's true, but it's still the single argument of an intransitive,
and thus qualifies as S.  This would only be problematic for someone
trying to analyze English as a split-S language.

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