Re: THEORY: Can Ditransitive Verbs Agree With More Than Two Core Arguments?

>Do you by any chance have a reference that shows how common these
>patterns you speak of are?  ("...how common are these patterns of which
>you speak", I guess might have been more better to say.)
>
>
 From Person by Anna Siewierska:

Accusative
A&P         65.4%
A               29.4%
P                5.2%
A or P         0%

Ergative
A&P         82%
A               0%
P                18%
A or P         0%

Active
A&P         85%
A               15%
P                 0%
A or P         0%

Hierarchical
A&P         67%
A               0%
P                0%
A or P        33%

This is from a study of languages which showed agreement on verbs. There
were 283 languages in the sample. As you can see, for ergative languages
which exhibit agreement, the vast majority (82%) in the sample agreed
with both the abs and erg arguments, with only a small minority (18%)
showing agreement with only the abs argument. Examples of languages
which agree with the P but not the A are: Karitiana, Kolana, Lak,
Palikur, and Trumai.

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