Re: Invitation to The Head-Last Project

On 23 Oct 2003 at 8:31, Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > I once made a sketch of a conlang which was, IIRC nom-acc in the past, abs-erg
> > in the present and Monster Raving Loony in the future, along with some bizarre
> > mappings between different case and tense endings; ergative, accusative and
> > intransitive, past and future where all unmarked, while nominative, absolutive,
> > transitive and present all took the same affix. Hm, that doesn't look quite
> > right - it was supposed to be completely unambigous too (syntax telling verbs
> > from nouns).
>
> Pidse has aspects of this in it, too. Except with moods and aspects,
> rather than tenses. More complicated stuff too. Probably bizarre and I'm
> sure there's _something_ that breaks the principle of anadewism. Written
> down in a book. Which I'll look at now that the holidays are almost here
> :)
One anti-anadewist move was Andreas making a language which was
ergative in the present and nominative in the past. Universally,
languages which split S dependant on tense do so the other way
around. There is a "naturalistic" explanation, which goes something
like "descriptions of events in the past are more likely to be
concerned with outcomes than initiators".




Paul

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