Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: cases depending of nouns

From:Damian Yerrick <tepples@...>
Date:Sunday, July 24, 2005, 4:44
"# 1" <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:

> After reading about Garawa grammar and learning that the pronouns > follow a nominative-accusative system and the nouns follow an > ergative-absolutive system, it led me to think of something. > > In active languages, the case of the subject of intransitive verb will
vary
> depending of the verb (and, in Fluid-S, of its volition), but are
there
> languages in which the case will vary depending of the noun used? > > Like, for example, the word "dog" might only be absolutive and the
word
> "man", only nominative in intransitive clauses, making that "the dog
runs"
> and "the man runs" would not use the same case without implying a
change of
> volition between the two sentences? > > Does such thing exists? If so how is it called?
In general this is called differential object marking based on animacy. (Use Google.) -- Damian