Re: Weird case marking patterns

>On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 23:28:28 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
> > In the section about mixed marking systems it says,
> > that there are languages which have an ergative-
> > absolutive marking system on NPs and nominative-
> > accusative marking on verbs while there are none
> > that have it the other way around (i.e. no language
> > with nom-acc NPs and erg-abs verbs!), but it doesn't
> > name any language which has this marking system.
> > It also mentions the _Nominal Hierarchy_:
> >
> > ^   1st person, 2nd person
> > |   3d person
> > |   personal name/kin term
> > |   human
> > |   animate
> > |   inanimate
> >
> > In languages with split ergativity categories towards
> > the top of the hierarchy are most likely to have nominative-
> > accusative case marking while items towards the bottom
> > are most likely to have ergative-absolutive case marking.
> > Again there are no known languages that violate the hierarchy,
> > i.e. having erg-abs on 1st/2nd person pronouns and nom-acc
> > on inanimates.  Languages differ WRT where in the hierarchy
> > they draw the border, but they don't wiolate the hierarchy.
Are you trying to say we could add "verbs" as the topmost entry of this
hierarchy? A bit counterintuitive, but why not, if it works.

Also, given the elaborate-ish NP hierarchy... is there any similar internal
hierarchy _within_ verbs? In other words, are there classes of verbs that in
erg/abs languages commonly take nom-acc marking for some reason?

(Yes, active/stative obviously, but besides that.)

John Vertical