Re: Ergativity!

Mae govannen, mellyn!

Mangiat wrote:
>
> 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?
I see no reason to relabel the ergative case in the examples above.
It just does what one expects from a case labeled that way.
What is displayed here are two uses of the verb _yegam_:

1.) As an intransitive verb meaning "I go (away)".
2.) As a transitive verb meaning "You/he/she/... causes me to go
(away)".

The second is the causative of the first, and if I am not mistaken,
this is a fairly frequent pattern in ergative languages:
to construct the causative, add an ergative NP (and perhaps modify
the verb form, e.g. in order to add subject agreement).

Suilad,

Joerg.