Re: ergative + another introduction

ok, i see your point - i think what caused confusion for me is that i
*wouldn't* say "arrivee", but instead "arriver", and this lead to
confusion.  but i would be able to parse "arrivee".  very interesting, it
is.  thanks.

-kit

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> From:    Kit La Touche <kit@...>
> > are you talking about unergative/unaccusative?
>
> No.
>
> > yes, everything is
> > somewhat ergative, somewhat accusative in that a given verb will have a
> > more or less agentive subject, but i think the distinction here is what
> > way the syntax chooses to look at it.
>
> What I meant is that it is probably the case that every language has
> morphological or syntactic manifestations of an ergative alignment,
> such as the one I gave before.  Unergativity and unaccusativity are
> relevant only to the extent that an unaccusative pattern may carry
> over to all intransitive verbs (i.e., to unergative verbs), and thus
> ipso facto becomes an ergative pattern.
>
> ==========================================================================
> Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
> Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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>