Ergativity!
From: | Mangiat <mangiat@...> |
Date: | Monday, July 31, 2000, 10:27 |
Hi folx!
How're ye? I was exploring my Vaiysi's ergative case system. I've come out
with an interesting feature. The ergative case should be called instead
causative, since now I make it work even with intransitive verbs. An
exemple?
Let us see an intransitive sentence:
Vyea yegam
me.Abs go.1s
I go
Then let us take a transitive statement:
Es teo talu
thou.Erg build.3s house.Abs.
'the house is built by thee', which can be read as 'the house is built
because of thee'.
Hence comes my idea:
Es yegam vyea
thou.Erg go.1s me.Abs
from thee I go > I go since thou causest my going > thou makest me go
( is the -st thing right?)
Does this happen in real world ergative languages? I like this, it helps
very much, since I've noticed in my little wordlist I haven't distinguished
trans. and intrans. verbs, so I don't know which ones should take erg and
which abs. In this system everything is possible : )
What do y'all think?
Luca