Re: Split-Ergativity Madness

What is Kurdish related to?  Is it IE?

The reason I asked is because as I read this, it seemed less odd, and indeed
very familiar.  Then I remembered why.  Hindi (and by extension Urdu) does
something very similar this too.  So I was wondering if there could be a
relation.  Geographically speaking, I'd say it was possible, but I don't
know anything about what family Kurdish is in.

In the past perfect tense, Hindi verbs agree with their objects, instead of
their subjects, like in most other tenses.  There is no word order switch
in Hindi, though, instead, the object is unmarked, and the subject is marked
by the ergative postposition 'ne.'  (Mistakenly called 'agentive' by my
book)

On Wed, Oct 03, 2001 at 07:51:44PM -0400, David Peterson wrote:
>     I just got some examples from Kurdish that show a really odd trend with
> their split ergativity.  I'll make up a language that does the same thing so
> that it's regular and easily identifiable.
>
> bo=I (1st person)
> ku=you
> mala=run
> gaba=see
> -na=past tense
> -b=agreement with 1st person for verbs
> -k=agreement with 2nd person for verbs
> -n=object marker
>
>     Notice, I didn't write anything like "ergative" or "absolutative" there.
> Watch how these exmaples go:
>
> Present Tense:
> 1.) bo malab.  ("I run", present tense.)
> 2.) bo kun gabab.  ("I see you" present tense.)
>
>     As I said, Kurdish is a split ergative language, so it maintains an
> accusative structure in the present.  Now, onto the past and the ergativity.
>
> Past Tense:
> 3.) bo malanab.  ("I ran")
> 4.) kun bo gabanak.  ("You saw me.")
>
>     Look at number four!  Essentially what you've done from number two to
> number one is put the verb in the past tense, switch the order of the
> pronouns and made the verb agree with object instead of the subject.  That's
> exactly what Kurdish does!  It's as if in the switch from present to past and
> accusative to ergative they switched the semantics of the affixes!  It's so
> confusing!
>
>     On a side note, has anyone heard anything about Swedish, Japanese and
> Serbo-Croat being pitch-accent languages?
>
> -David

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