Re: Language Sketch: Yargish Orkish

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

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