Re: Language Sketch: Yargish Orkish

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
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