accusative and ergative languages

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Wolfgang and IEists:

First let me thank you for your very interesting and thought-provoking
comments.

----- Original Message -----
From: Wolfgang Schulze <W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 1999 5:18 AM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" schrieb:

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

Wolfgang wrote:

> Before you invite people to subscribe to this claim you should first
> demonstrate that a) "most ergative languages have antipassives".

Pat writes:

I have reviewed Dixon, and apologize for the claim. I inferred incorrectly
that beacuse Dixon so often mentioned antipassives in connection with
ergatives that the frequency of their co-occurence was high.

Wolfgang worte further:

> 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.

Pat writes:

In the sense you are using these, they seem to be of little value in
describing anything.

Wolfgang wrote further:

> 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).

Pat writes:

I am sorry that I do not agree with the validity of this distinction. For
me, 'actant' is 'agent'. Perhaps you can explain the difference.

Wolfgang wrote:

> 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").

Pat writes:

Are you asserting that the majority of ergative languages do not have
anti-passives?

Wolfgang wrote:

> 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.

Pat writes:

I was not aware that I was using anti-passives as a "typological
generalization". I only suggested (I thought) that that was one method
ergative languages employed for degrees of animacy/actancy.

Wolfgang wrote further:

> 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.

Pat writes:

After having read Dixon, I can hardly be unaware of these considerations;
however, I can see that degree of actantcy might be defined in this context
meaningfully. But actantcy and animacy are still closely related.

As for the far-reaching conclusions of Dixon based on discourse conhesion
strategies, in my opinion they are flawed because these strategies are
purely conventional.

In English, I can say: "John hit me, and he went away" or "I hit John and he
went away". What is the discourse cohesion strategy for English?

Wolfgang further wrote:

> 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).

Pat wrote earlier:

>> 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 schizophrenic) which he is
>> forced to do by analyzing pronominal and nominal structures differently when
>> they occur in the same sentence.

Wolfgang wrote further:

> 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]

Pat writes:

I have to plead ignorance of Lak however, I find an analysis of an otherwise
completely ergative sentence as having an ACC word-order impossible. I
believe this opinion rests on a false analysis of word-order significance.

Wolfgang continued:

> 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').

Pat writes:

So, agent marked ABS and patient marked ABS is, according to you, ACC with
respect to case marking? Sorry, not convincing at all! And I think the SAP
difference can be explained as indicating seriality of the patients involved
as recipients of the action by *one* agent.

Wolfgang wrote further:

> 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].

Pat writes:

By these examples, I would tell you that Lak is 'ergative'; and that
accusativity is not demonstrable from these examples.

Pat wrote previously:

>> 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.

Wolfgang wrote:

> 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...

Pat writes:

I do not have a reference book for Lak so that my hands are somewhat tied.
But, I have found that paradigms are often inconsistent in ways that reflect
earlier lost phonological changes, or other lost schemata. The locative
plural terminations of IE are certainly not, in origin, terminations of the
locative plural. Etc.

But, Wolfgang, I have to thank you because you are stretching my mind, and I
like the feeling.

Thank you.

Pat

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