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Re: Language Sketch: Yargish Orkish

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Friday, August 16, 2002, 8:33
Quoting Elliott Lash <AL260@...>:

> 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),
Right; I own a copy of the book, and have read it.
> 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.
Note the context in which my statement was made: I was objecting specifically to the use of the ergative as an *ablative*. I never made the claim that ergative and _locative_ functions can not be used with the same case marking. In fact, in looking through Blake's book here, I notice that at no time does he mention an ablative as having anything to do with an ergative case, except once. This one instance was his discussion of Hjelmslev's theory of case. Hjelmslev made the (very naive) claim (as expressed by Blake) that "a case, like linguistic forms in general, does not signify several different things. It signifies 'a single abstract notion from which one can deduce concrete uses'" (Blake 38). I am fairly sure that most case theoreticians today would disagree with this statement because of its teleological overtones. And indeed, Hjelslev was not even claiming that the ergative-genitive of Greenlandic Eskimo (which he was describing) *was* the ablative, so much as it was aligned with that case (Blake 39), since it supposedly action proceeds forth *from* the agent, which is kinda begging the question. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier Dept. of Linguistics "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua 1010 E. 59th Street eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca Chicago, IL 60637