Re: Accusative? The saga continues ...

#
# >"Ergative/Absolutive" is defined as where O and S are marked the same,
# >and A differently.
# >
# >"Nominative/Accusative" is defined as where A and S are marked the same,
# >and O is marked differently.
# >
# >That leaves one (basic) combination left... Marking A and O similarly
# >(Transitive), and S differently (Intransitive)
# >
# >From what I've seen so far, your language so far seems to conform more
# >closely
# >to this last type than to either of the first two.
#
# Unless my brain has recently been reprogrammed by Mircosoft, Altaii
# maintains an absolute distinction between A and P (whereas S, as far as I
# can see, can be identified with either without creating any weirdities).
# Basic syntax of a transitive sentence is;
#
# A P (everything else) VERB
#
# whereas intransitive ones are;
#
# S (everything else) VERB
#
# While neither A nor P (nor S) get any case-endings, the syntax makes it
# unambiguous what's what.
#

But it's still ambiguous with respect to whether A or P is marked
similarly to S (and by marked, I mean syntactically), which is necessary
to determine whether it is Accusative or Ergative (if in fact that
is necessary... personally, i think it would be more interesting to see it stay
ambiguous).

Syntactic marking is relative, it depends on it's position in the phrase.
So unlike morphological marking where we can take a single word out of the
phrase and say "This is the Patient", with syntactic marking we have to look
at what comes before and after it. So with your language, you would have to
make sure there is a noun before it (Agent) and a verb after it before such a
confident determination as "This is the Patient" can be made. Thus,
the assignment of semantic roles depends on the pattern of the phrase.
And as you pointed out above, the two patterns are Intransitive, and
Transitive.

Just an idea. In the end I guess it doesn't really matter whether
it's Intransitive, Ergative, Accusative, or Purple. :)

-tim

http://www.zece.com/conlang/