Re: Re; Ergativity

John Cowan wrote at 2003-08-16 00:59:33 (-0400)
 > J?rg Rhiemeier scripsit:
 >
 > > At least one element in English shows ergative behaviour:
 > > the suffix -ee.  An escapee is one who escapes, but an employee
 > > is one who is employed.
 >
 > "Escapee" is anomalous: the great majority of words in -ee are
 > passive, like employee, and come in pairs.  This is derived from
 > legal English (which originally was borrowing the participial
 > suffix from French, of course).
 >
 > The only other such -ee words I can find are absentee (one who absents
 > himself) and bargee (one who poles a barge).
 >

Attendee, retiree.  None of these are perfect examples, though, apart
from escapee.  "To absent" is not syntactically intransitive.  Bargee
isn't derived from a verb "to barge" at all (at least not
synchronically in my dialect).  "To retire" is labile* (although the
intransitive formation is more common, and I think older).  "To
attend" can be transitive, and in this case "attendee" refers to A.

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.


* That is, the subject of "x retires" is the same role as the object
  of "y retires x".

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