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Re: ergative + another introduction

From:Kit La Touche <kit@...>
Date:Saturday, November 20, 2004, 21:09
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 > University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of > 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. > Chicago, IL 60637 >