Re: Help with grammar terms

OK, Nicole, as I understand it, it goes like this:

ACCUSATIVE: (example: English)
One-argument verbs always have the same case, called "nominative":
   "She smiles."
Two-argument verbs use that case for the agent and another case, the
"accusative," for the patient:
   "She questions him."

ERGATIVE:  (example: mutant future English where the passive
            construction has been generalized into an OV ergative
            and ordinary transitive sentences have been lost)

Like accusative languages, one-argument verbs always have the same
case, but now it's called "absolutive":
   "She smiles."
Two-argument verbs use the absolutive for the *patient* and another
case, the "ergative," for the agent:
   "Byer he zqueschund."

Here, "she" is the absolutive case and "byer" is the ergative case.
"zqueschund" means "questions," and has its subject (the agent) in the
ergative case, and its object (the patient) in the absolutive case.

This happened because people first started using the passive
construction, e.g. "By her he is questioned" a lot, and then it was
reanalyzed as an ordinary, non-passive construction with weird forms
and case-markings.

ACTIVE LANGUAGES:

(short for "active-stative languages")

I'm not totally clear on these.



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                       edheil@postmark.net
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nicole perrin wrote:

> I always get confused about things like ergative, active, accusative,
> and it would be so much appreciated if someone could post just a brief
> overview of each, it would be really really helpful.  The reason this
> came to mind was part of a new language idea that I had, and I don't
> really know what to call it.
>
> My idea was this:  case marking on the noun only for the agent and
> patient of the verb.  Whether the verb is active or passive (whether the
> agent or patient was acting as the subject of the sentence) is marked on
> the verb.  Also, I was toying with the idea of having a gender hierarchy
> (I don't know why, but I've had a real thing for hierarchies in my
> conlangs lately - this is *not* the same lang I described about a month
> ago with the gender hierarchy, though, don't get confused) which
> determined word order.  So, what *is* that?
>
> Nicole
> --
> nicole.eap@snet.net
> http://nicole.conlang.org