accusative and ergative languages

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

>> Having to be rendered by the passive in English is not the same thing as
>> "being passive in nature".

>Pat responds:

>How about explaining "passive in nature"?  Is that a Platonic idea?

As you might have observed, I put double quotes around this expression, the
most widespread functions of which are:

- the expression is not mine, but used by others, and I use it only not to
complicate the discussion, assuming everyone knows what I'm talking about

or

- the expression is handy, but admittedly imprecise, I only use it since I
don't want to put too much effort in terminological precision at this
point, having different things to communicate (admittedly a vice, but
normally tolerable when speaking to attentive and knowledgable people)

I was reacting to some claim of yours, namely that ergatives are - now what
was your expression ? I don't recall, was it "really passives", "always
former. i.e. reanalyzed p.s", "p.s in nature", "p.s by nature". Hell, I
dunno. Something to this effect, at least. The important thing is that I
managed to point out that this, i.e. the ergative-as-passive-claim, however
phrased, is wrong, and Larry Trask, who has also a well-known publishing
record on the issue, has spoken the definite word about this here.
Pat, this is, alas, a familiar pattern: when one's theory gets into dire
straits, some aside discussion on irrelevant points is opened, obviously
with the intention to show weaknesses of whatever kind in the opponent's
standing, hoping that this will cloud the correct and justified remarks he
might have made on the relevant points before. This may work in some
election campaign, but not here, sorry.

To answer your question: "passives in nature", as used by me, is neither a
Platonic idea, nor a Wittgensteinean prototype, nor a correct description
of anything I may happen to think, it is just shorthand for a bundle of
concepts I don't share. And, above all, it is bad English. Should we open a
new thread about this, or shouldn't we better return to ergativity and your
misconceptions about it, such as "there are ergative languages without any
splits" athl. ?

Stefan

Stefan Georg
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