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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