Re: VOS

There is a book that has an article that describes the split-ergativity
in Yucatec very well (the article is actually about the anti-passive
construction). It is in a book on Mayan writing from (I think- Linda Schele).
I have the book at home, but it is stowed far away and my wife doesn't
allow me to mess up the attic to find it (we are expecting a baby within
10 weeks from now and everything in the house has to be tidy in the
extreme ;-( )
But I shall have a look at other books and let you know asap.
Rob

>>> Matt Pearson <jmpearson@...> 04/26 6:23  >>>
>I don't know if VOS automatically means that it is ergative.
>Yucatec Maya is split ergative. It is nominative in imperfect and
>ergative in perfect (or the other way round, I start to doubt now) aspect.
Where does your information on Yucatec Mayan come from?
I'm very interested in split-ergative languages where the split
follows aspect lines.  Do you have a reference?

As for what the correlation is:  If Yucatec Mayan is like other
split-ergative languages, it should be nominative in the imperfect
and ergative in the perfect.  I would be *very* surprised and
interested if the split went the other way (I'm toying with a
theory which predicts that the split has to go this way).

Matt.