Re: THEORY: Ergative-Genitive Connection

>Sorry, if this topic has been beaten to death in years past, but what is the
>connection between the ergative and genitive--in more precise terms why do
>ergative forms of pronouns in Mayan languages also get used as possessive
>adjectives?
Using ergative case to mark possessors is quite common (the Inuit languages
do it too).  Using nominative case to mark possessors is less common, but
also attested (in Hungarian, for example).  As for *why* you get these
correlations, nobody knows.  Many syntacticians argue that noun phrases
have a structure parallel to clauses (e.g., cf. "Leonardo painted the Last
Supper" and "Leonardo's painting of the Last Supper"), and that possessors
occupy a position within the noun phrase which is structurally analogous
to the position occupied by (transitive) subjects in clauses.

In fact, this is the strategy I chose for representing possession in Tokana:
In Tokana, (animate, definite, volitional) possessors and transitive subjects
are both marked with nominative case:  The same suffixed form of the
determiner (e.g., 3 sing. animate "-na") attaches both to verbs and to
possessed nouns:

   Imeh  iona  stelhmin-na  Tsion  te  eiosok
   me.DAT  known  found-the.NOM  John.NOM  the.ABS  answer
   "I know that John found the answer"

   te  halma-na  Tsion
   the  book-the.NOM  John.NOM
   "John's book"

Matt.