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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