Re: anti-active case marking

On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> Muke Tever wrote:
>
> > > Another idea: an "anti-active" language.  Active intransitive verbs
> > > (such as "to laugh") treat their subjects like direct objects,
> > > while non-active verbs (e.g. "to fall") like transitive subjects:
> > >
> > > child-I stone-II throw
> > >
> > > child-II laugh
> > >
> > > stone-I fall
> > >
> > > (I and II are some kinds of cases, for which I haven't invented names
> > > yet;
> > > or use head marking instead.)
> >
> > Hmm, quasi-ergative-ish.  Actually my Hadwan will have started on the road
> > to ergativity this way, and although I hadn't thought of putting in a
> > distinction between active/non-active use of I/II, it's an interesting idea
> > I may need to use...
>
> Why that way?  The pattern I proposed is semantically absolutely
> implausible, and I never intended it to be anything else than a joke.
> I think it is a bad idea to use in a fictional natlang (i.e. in a
> language
> designed to represent a language that evolved naturally in a fictional
> world) because it is implausible.
>
> Jörg.
Ba nu!*  I think this could happen naturally if it were the result of a
phonetic merger of two categories.  Perhaps if the original were an active
system with the following categories:

I - Actor of a volitional transitive verb
II - object of a volitional transitive verb
III - actor of an active intransitive verb
IV - actor of an inactive intransitive verb

Conceivably II and III could spontaneously fall together forming a sort of
mixed
ergative-active system, and if it stayed that way it wouldn't be too
exceptional.  But after that a sound change might combine I and
IV--something that wouldn't make sense semantically but could be
phonologically motivated.  The resulting system would be like the one
shown above.

Okay, so that's still not too plausible, but it's not impossible.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"All for the sake of paradise, the tyrants of our generation stacked
bodies higher than Nimrod stacked bricks, yet they came no nearer heaven
than he did."  --J. Budziszevsky