Re: Split-Ergativity Madness
| From: | Amber Adams <amber@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, October 4, 2001, 17:43 |
|---|
A couple of people have pointed out that it's Iranian (IE), so I'm going
to guess, then, that the relation between Hindi and Kurdish is the reason
they share this feature. I wonder if any of the other IE languages of this
general part of the world have ergativity oddities? Farsi, etc...
Anyone know?
Of course, if not, it could just be a coincidence. ;)
On Thu, Oct 04, 2001 at 03:40:24AM -0400, David Peterson wrote:
> In a message dated 10/3/01 7:53:23 PM, amber@OJNK.NET writes:
>
> << What is Kurdish related to? Is it IE? >>
>
> I'm not sure... It's spoken by a small group of people in Iran, I'm
> told, though it's quickly disappearing. I think the reason why the
> construction may look familiar (if, indeed, it turns out not to be related to
> Hindi) is because a passive can often times turn into an ergative past
> tense--or, at least, that's what my historical linguistics professor is
> arguing.
>
> -David