Ergativity in Adunaic (was Re: Degrees of volition in active languages...)

Me govannen!

J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> > [conhistory of Amman-iar]
>
> Adunaic was ergative?  Based on the sketchy description of Adunaic in one of
> Christopher Tolkien's "History of Middle-Earth" volumes, the morphological case
> system seems to me to have been modelled loosely on Berber, with a "bound" case
> used for postverbal objects and genitives and a "free" case used for preveral
> subjects.  Or am I misremembering?
I don't know this canonical source, but I got the impression from
Helge's page

http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/adunaic.htm

that Adunaic is ergative.  According to that page, there was a case,
termed
"subjective" by Helge, marked with the ending _-un_, which was used for
subjects of verbs, and an unmarked case which Helge calls "normal".
(It also mentions an "objective" form used in compounds, which obviously
corresponds to the "bound" form you have mentioned.)

This kind of marking is typical for ergative languages (ergatives are
always marked, and absolutives usually not).  From the example given in
the page, it seems that intransitive subjects take the "normal" case
instead of the
"subjective":

_Anadu^ne^ zi^ra^n hikallaba_ "Numenor the beloved fell down"

However, the matter is not entirely clear, and Adunaic might actually be
an _active_ language, as we have

_Kado^ Zigu^run zabatha^n unakkha_ "And so the Wizard came humbled"

with _Zigu^run_ being "subjective" of _Zigu^r_ "wizard", where one would
expect the "normal" (absolutive) form instead:

_**Kado^ Zigu^r zabatha^n unakkha_

Note that "to fall" is an inactive verb and "to come" an active one,
hence we would expect the two cases used exactly as in the examples
given if Adunaic was indeed an active language.  In Nur-ellen, the two
sentences would be translated

Njumenor    ammjelnen   lantent
OBJ.Numenor OBJ.beloved fall-PAST

vs.

A   si   in  Itr`n      tolent    dannurnen
And thus the AGT.wizard come-PAST humbled

which shows the same distribution of cases as observed in the Adunaic
examples.

However, as Sauron (who is meant by "the Wizard" in the examples) came
as a prisoner, one would actually use the instrumental, which is not
only used for
inanimate "subjects", but also for subjects doing something against
their will under force:

A   si   ni   in  Ithr`n     tolent    dannurnen
And thus INST the OBJ.wizard come-PAST humbled

Did I mention this use in my post about degrees of volition in
Nur-ellen?

Syld,
Joerg.