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Re: Language Sketch: Yargish Orkish

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Friday, August 16, 2002, 19:47
Elliott Lash wrote:
>trwier@UCHICAGO.EDU writes: > > > > POSTPOSITIONS > > > > > > Yargish has a largish number of postpositions, that combines with the > > > ergative, dative and locative cases. For spatial postpositions, the > > > ergative carries ablative meaning, the dative allative and the >locative, > > > um, locative meaning. Taking _dir_ "forest" and _-zata_ "in, inside", > > > we then have: > > > > It's a little unusual that the ergative would carry that oblique > > spatial meaing, but possible if phonological sound changes collapsed > > two originally distinct cases. Is this the case in Yargish? > > >Why? In my book on case: CASE Second Edition by Barry J. Blake (a Cambridge >Textbook in Linguistics), he gives many examples showing ergative in >locative, ablative, instrumental and genitive functions. Of course, >ablative and instrumental seem to be the most common secondary functions of >the ergative, but, I dont see why it's "unusual" to be locative instead. >
Actually, the Yargish ergative doubles up as an ablative when used with postpositions. The locative sense is appropriately enough handled by the locative case. Andreas _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com