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Help! Verb agreement

From:Matt McLauchlin <matt_mcl@...>
Date:Wednesday, September 27, 2000, 3:04
OK. Lyanjen has verbs that are conjugated for person as well as tense (like
Romance languages). For example:

Iar teuca Áudridan.
ia-r   | teuc-a         | Áudrid-an
I  erg | love 1pSgPrSim | Audrid abs
"I love Audrid."

Áudridar teuc ian.
Áudrid-ar  | teuc-Ø         | ia-n
Audrid erg | love 3pSgPrSim | I  abs
"Audrid loves me."

Obviously, in the first sentence, "teuc" accords with the first
person "ia", and in the second, it accords with the third person "Audrid".

I can also construct a sentence like so:

Teuc ian.
teuc-Ø         | ia-n
love 3pSgPrSim | I  abs
"(Someone) loves me."

And I can go so far as to do this:


Ian teuc.
ia-n   | teuc-Ø
I  abs | love 3pSgPrSim
"I am loved."

Wait a minute... The rule seems to be that the verb doesn't accord with the
*subject* of the sentence, but with the *nominative or ergative* in the
sentence, and defaults to third person singular if no such noun is present.
Is there anything wrong with doing this, i.e. does it violate some
universal rule I haven't heard of?