Re: active vs. semantic marking languages (was: Re: Noun tense)

On Wed, Jul 24, 2002 at 10:41:09AM +0100, Daniel Andreasson Vpc wrote:
[snip]
> The purely semantic marking languages are of a
> whole other kind.
>
> Imho, we need to do one of the following things.
>
> i) Include the semantic marking languages into the
> "active" group.
Hmm. How does one explain Ebisedian then? The "case-markings" (which I'm
not sure is "case" anymore) are purely and wholly semantic, to the point
that the choice of noun-case is completely governed by the semantics of
the verb---each of the 5 cases can act as "subject" to a verb (though
admittedly the very concept of "subject" is probably meaningless in that
context). It's almost like the *verb* is always the "subject", and all
nouns are merely auxilliary arguments to it.

Even I myself don't know how to classify it, but it sure feels
naturalistic once you get used to it.

> ii) Call "split intransitive" languages "active" and give
> a new name to the "semantic marking" kind. I'm suggesting "semantic marking",
> or possibly "agentive"
> even though "agentive" and lots of other names are
> used for "active". Other suggestions? I think we would
> benefit from a more subtle distinction.
>
> So what do people think? Does anyone but me even care?
[snip]

Well, I care to the point of interest, that's all. I don't *really* care
one way or the other, but I'm interested to know where Ebisedian fits in
terms of syntactic categorization.


T

--
The two rules of success: 1. Don't tell everything you know. -- YHL