Re: THEORY: Active case-marking natlangs

Just a few notes on Jörg's post.

Marcus wrote:
> > The distinction is not really based on active/stative, as seen by the
fact
> > that _royo't^e'_ 'he works' is marked as stative, and _rakowan^_ 'he is
> > big' is marked as active.
Jörg wrote:
> Interesting!  After all, "to work" is a typical active verb, and "to be
> big" is as stative as it can be!  These examples make the entire thing
> stand on its head ;-)
This is explained thus:

The word began as a basic stative, meaning something like 'be occupied,
engaged'. Then new aspectual forms were derived and working was expressed
as an event -- a habitual activity. That is, the original stative form
was adopted as the habitual with its patient-case intact, and new
punctual, perfect and imperative forms were derived, all retaining the
patient case. This gets even more clear if you compare Mohawk to its
sister languages Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora.

Or in one word: lexicalization.

> It apparently also shows what we have already seen in Mohawk - that
> active marking has little to do with whether a verb is actually active
> or not: I remember an earlier posting from Marcus in which he told us
> that numerals in Ch. are active verbs!  Well, what I would expect from
> an active language that treats numerals as verbs is that they are
> stative. But apparently, I expect way too much of an active language.
Well, if I've analyzed Chickasaw correctly -- which I have of course :)
-- then my conclusion for marking quantificationals (i.e. "numerals")
as Agents is that they are seen as controlled, since the basic motivation
for the Chickasaw agreement marking is control. Hence it doesn't matter
if they are events or states of whatever.

daniel