Re: Ergative or Vocative?

Nik wrote:

>Danny Wier wrote:
> > Nominative      weat        k@ul        [wE:t, k@ulw]
> > Oblique stem    weta-       k@lu-       [wEta, k@lu]
> > Accusative      wetaam      k@luam      [wetam, k@luVm]
>
>Why is the {e} in "wetter-" pronounced [E], while in "wetted" it's [e]?
It's not; that was a typo.  It should be [wEta:m] > [wEtam`] (length
distinction in suffixes is generally lost; I didn't mention that in my last
post).

But I might change the root to _wet@_ since I just came up with the
a-pharyngealization rule, and I'd have way too many pharyngeals if I
replaced unknown vowels in Nostratic with <a> instead of <a">.

> > Gen. of acc.    wetamaun    k@lumaun    [wetamaunw, k@lumaunw]
>
>What's "gen. of ace."?
Genitive of accusative.  A case you'd find in languages like Basque (well,
really genitive of absolutive or ergative); they're referred to as 'cases of
cases'.  (Tech case construction is a complex of internal inflections,
suffixes and prepositions, and many combinations.  There are 'officially'
about ten cases, give or take, with a ton of locatives.)

> > So for the zero-ending, what would be more likely in a natlang -- a
>vocative
> > case or an ergative?
>
>Vocative, a unrounding ergative would be pretty unusual.
I know.  So what are some examples of ergative markers?  (I don't have my
Georgian grammar overview handy, and I just remember Basque _-ek_ or is it
_-ak_...)

Danny

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