Re: Ergativity and verb forms

On 19 Jun 2004 Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@GM...> wrote:

> Is there a technical term for the "previously mentioned one" in
> linguistics? My conlang Asha'ille uses "previously mentioned" data a
> lot, and it'd be nice to be able to properly describe what it's doing.
>  :)
  I do not know a single term, since it may cover different concepts.
In the languages where there are 4 persons, thai is the two 3rd persons
e.g. for the previously mentioned and the previously not mentioned one,
we can use the terms "obviative" 'i.e. obvious person' or "proximate"
'i.e. latter mentioned person' (cf. previous thread "THEORY: The fourth
person").

  However in my example, the phrase "previously mentioned one" meant a
different thing. In languages which uses affixes on verbs that agree
with verbal complements (e.g. they incorporate the person of the direct
object into the verb), you do not have to specify the complements
itself, if it is obvious from the context. E.g. Hungarian "Ismerem
Janost. Kedvelem." 'I know John. I know [him].' The equivalent of
'[him]' is omitted in Hungarian, because verb form "kedvelem"
incorporates a reference to a known 3rd person direct object. I do not
know if this kind of "previously mentioned one" had a technical term.
In Hungarian it is considered rather as a special conjugation called
"definite" (i.e. it refers to a definite direct object), the same is
called in Basque usually as conjugation "nor-nork" 'whom-who' (and "nor-
nori" 'who-to whom' or "nor-nori-nork" 'whom-to whom-who').

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