Re: Ergative?

Quoting Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>:

> On Thu, 27 Sep 2001 00:02:01 -0500, Thomas R. Wier
> <trwier@...> wrote:
> >
> >There are actually some ergative languages where the ergative
> >marks agents of any kind, including those in passive sentences,
> >where we'd normally expect something called instrumental.
>
> BTW, is there a simple criterion to distinguish the ergative
> construction from the passive one?
That's a good question.  I'm not an expert on ergativity (Dixon is;
check out his book of that name in the Cambridge series).  I would
think that if a language has distinct forms for active and passive
(ignoring whether it is ergative), then that might constitute such
a criterion.  For example, in Phaleran, a detransitive morpheme
explicitly distinguishes between passive, which has this, and the
active, which lacks it:

   ACTIVE:  Ahrallu      pû      gethasyonti.
            Governor.ERG boy-ABS see.TR.3SgPfRe.S
            'The Governor looked at the boy.'
   PASSIVE: Pû      ahrânto       gethabronti.
            boy-ABS Governor.INST see.DETR.3SgPfRe.S
            'The boy was looked at by the Governor.'

(The valence-marking situation in Phaleran is complex; the suffix
-asyo- here marked TR(ansitive) might be considered an active suffix,
but it doesn't appear in every active construction.)

So, you could artificially replace the ergative morphology with
nominative/accusative morphology (and you would see this with Phaleran
pronouns), but you'd still get distinct active and passive renderings.
So, I think the two notions are quite distinct.

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"If a man demands justice, not merely as an abstract concept,
but in setting up the life of a society, and if he holds, further,
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