accusative and ergative languages

[Wolfgang Schulze]

"Patrick C. Ryan" schrieb:

>.... As for lessened degrees of animacy, most ergative languages
> have antipassives to indicate this.

Before you invite people to subscribe to this claim you should first
demonstrate that a) "most ergative languages have antipassives". This
claim suggests that "ergative" is a substantial attribute that can be
used with the referent "language". In earlier postings I have tried to
show that "ergativity" (as well as "accusativity") represents a label
for a structural BEHAVIOR of single paradigms WITHIN a language system.
For instance (as I have said) a language system may be ergative in its
agreement paradigm, accusative in owrd order, accusative in case
marking, ergative in discourse cohesion etc. (to give a fictive
example). Hence, there are NO "ergative (or "accusative") languages" or
only, if you use this term in a very informal sense. Now, if you talk
about antipassives, you should make clear to which morphosyntactic
domain you allude to. Moreover, your claim suggests that most 'ergative
languages' are reference dominated in the sense of Role and Reference
Grammar. Only if a given language system ("operating systems in terms of
the Grammar of Scenes and Scennarios" (GSS)) uses actant encoding
devices to indicate fore- and/or backgrouding (instead of - for instance
- smeanti coles such as agent/patient...) we can expect some kind of
diathesis be it passive or antipassive (note that again passives and
antipassives represent two poles on a much more complex scale that also
involes bi-absolutives, pseudo-passives and many more structures).
	The fact, however, is that many 'ergative' languages lack an
antipassive. For instance, there are nearly 30 East Caucasian languages
all of them using some ergative strategies in at least parts of their
operating systems. But only a handfull of them (five or six, to be
precise) have true antipassives (only one has some kind of
"pseudo-passive"). The same is true for accusative systems (as you
probably know). Hence, antipassives are a possible extension of ergative
stretagies, they cannot serve for any kind of typological
generalization.

b) Antipassives have rarely to do with the "lessening of animacy". The
most common inferences that allow antipassive structures are:

- Reduction of 'activity' (that is the degree to which an actant is
thought to be 'active' during a *specifc* (and single) event. From this
another inference is given:

- Habitual, durative action (-> imperfectiveness).....

- The event becomes less discrete, hence less transitive. Another
inference: The 'patient' looses its referentiality: It cannot be
subjected to wh-questions, it cannot be counted, very often such
referents are mass nouns or collectives...

- Antipassives are part of the discourse cohesion strategies (most
famous example is Dyirbal): Here, antipassives are neither semantically
nor syntactically motivated, but merely a pragmatic feature of topic
chaining.

There are much more functional options that are carried out by
antipassives. In fact, all these options NEVER allow such a claim as
quoted above (rather, they contradict it).

> Although Dixon is certainly a man who has devoted much thought to
> ergativity, I find something inherently problematical in combining ergative
> and accusative features in one sentence (a little schzophrenic) which he is
> forced to do by analyzing pronominal and nominal structures differently when
> they occur in the same sentence.

WHY? It all depends from how you interpret erg. and acc. features.
Confer for instance the following (one!) sentence from (informal) Lak
(East Caucasian):

t:ul b-at:-ay-s:a-ru zu
I:ERG I:PL-hit-PART:PRES-ASS-SAP:PL you:PL:ABS
'I surely hit you (plural)'

[For the expert: Standard (Literary) Lak would have 'na bat:ays:aru zu'].

This sentence is:

ACC with respect to word order [*zu t:ul bat:ays:ara would be ERG]
ERG with respect to case marking ['neutral with 'na' for "I" is also
possible]
ERG with respect to class agreement (b- = (here) class [+hum;+plural])
ERG with respect to personal (or, better, speech act participant)
agreement (-ru is SAP:PL and agrees with 'zu' "you:PL").

But if you say "I am surely hitting you (plural)", you get:

na b-at-la-ti-s:a-ra zu
I:ABS I:PL-hit1-DUR-hit2-ASS-SAP:SG you:PL:ABS

Here we have:

ACC with respect to word order
ERG with respect to calss agreement
ACC (or neutral) with respect to case marking)
ACC with respect to SAP agreement (-ra is triggered by 'I:ABS').

Now, please tell me: Is Lak an 'ergative' or an 'accusative' language?
[Please note that I did not include (among others) strategies of
discourse cohesion, reflexivization and logophization].

> I think it is likelier that, because of perceived greater animacy (or
> definiteness), pronouns have a different method of marking that can still be
> interpreted within an ergative context.

This a (very simplified) 'on-dit' that stems from the earlier version of
the Silverstsein hierachy. Again, we have to deal with the question,
whether a 'pronoun' (I guess you mean some kind of 'personal pronouns')
can behave 'ergatively' or 'accusatively'. The list below gives you a
selection of SAP case marking in East Caucasian languages with respect
to ABS/ERG:

	ABS vs. ERG	ABS = ERG
	ALL		---
	Singular	Plural
	Plural		Singular
	1.Incl.		Rest
	1:SG		Rest
	2:SG		Rest
	1:SG/PL		Rest
	---		ALL	

This list (aspects of personal agreement NOT included!) shows that SAP
pronouns may behave different within the same paradigm. Any
generalization like that  one quoted above does not help to convey for
these data...

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