Re: Ergative or Vocative?

Danny Wier wrote:
>>
>> >                 'water'     'bride'
>> > Nominative      weat        k@ul        [wE:t, k@ulw]
>> > Oblique stem    weta-       k@lu-       [wEta, k@lu]
>> > Accusative      wetaam      k@luam      [wetam, k@luVm]
>> > Genitive        wetaun      k@luun      [wetaumw, k@lu:n]
>> > Gen. of acc.    wetamaun    k@lumaun    [wetamaunw, k@lumaunw]
>> > Vocative?       weta        k@lu
>> >
>> > So for the zero-ending, what would be more likely in a natlang -- a
>>vocative
>> > case or an ergative?
>>
>>Well, since you already have a fairly typical nominative-accusative
>>system going here, I'd suggest vocative.
>
>Yeah, I'll probably go that route.  Except I actually have a mixed system,
>similar to that of Georgian.  I don't know how ergative is going to be
>marked, nor do I know in what verbal/clause environments.  I'm thinking of
>adopting the Kartvelian screeve system (the matrix of tense-aspect-status
>that helps make Georgian verb grammar very scary).
In every ergative language that I know of, the ergative is marked in some
way, so you should definitely have an ending for it.  In split-ergative
languages
(and many simple ergative languages), the ergative case often uses the same
ending as one of the locative cases - typically the instrumental or the dative.
Sometimes the ablative.  So if you have any of those cases in Tech, you might
draft one of them to serve as an ergative marker in perfective clauses.

Matt.