Re: Ergativity and verb forms

Emaelivpeith Racsko Tamas
> However in my example, the phrase "previously mentioned one" meant a
> different thing.
It's your second type of "previously mentioned" that I meant.

> 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').
In Asha'ille, you can (and normally do) drop previously mentioned
information, sometimes using pronouns and sometimes using nothing at
all. For example:

Arevnilordhi ne emeirjho.
arev -ni  -l-  -ordhi  ne   emeirjho
give self OBJ: someone OBJ: flower
I give someone a flower.

Any verbs that follow, which do not specify via conjugational endings or
explicit subjects/objects, will be understood to carry the last information so
given:

Direv n'o.
direv ne   no
take  OBJ: it
I take it from someone.

Or even more simply:

Direv.

The verbs don't have to be in adjacent sentences. There just can't be
any verbs with specified information on them, else the last verb will
take *its* information instead. For example:

"Arevnilordhi ne emeirjho. Jhor'no t'fin. Sshak muahaha! Direv. Daedh arev."

means

"I gave someone a flower. It was[1] white. I said[2], 'Muahaha!" I
took the flower from (that same) someone. I gave it to them again."

[1] The construction "jhor'A t'B" means "A is B" or A=B, but has no
actual verb in it expressing the equivalence relationship. Is there a
term for this? I just looked up "copula," which turns out to have to
be a verb, so that can't be it.

[2] "Sshak" introduces a direct quote. It's no more a verb than
English's "quote end-quote" phrase.


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AA