Interpreting ergative sentences

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

>[Ed Selleslagh]

>Speaking about Castilian, I would like to have your views on a peculiarity,
>or rather a tendency, that is still productive at least in popular speech
>('le-ismo'), namely the tendency to use the indirect subject form where all
>other Latin (and other West-European) languages use the direct object form,
>and almost exclusively with persons (animate), e.g. "le v=ED" ("le vi' "), "I
>saw him".

I don't actually know Spanish; I just know a few examples of how such verbs
work in Spanish and many other languages.

>It has sometimes be suggested that this was a substrate influence from
>Basque, an ergative language (that lacks an accusative, of course), but
>opinions are extremely divided on this subject. On the other hand, it seems
>to me this could (but I don't know) also be related to some of the arguments
>presented in the discussion on ergative/accusative concerning the distinct
>role of animates.

I don't know any Basque either.  But I believe that the same tendency is found
in Sicilian dialects, so I'm a little leery of looking to Basque for an
explanation.  Especially since, as far as I know, personal absolutive NPs with
transitive verbs get the same treatment as impersonal NPs, while beneficiary
"indirect objects" with verbs such as 'give' get a different, "dative"
treatment.  If that's so, then Basque doesn't show the tendency to treat all
personal non-ergative NPs with bi- or trivalent verbs alike.  But better ask
Larry about that.

I should add further that I'm generally suspicious of explanations based on
substrate influence.  Yes, substrates are real, and sometimes they do seem to
provide a plausible explanation of one phenomenon or another.  But languages
are capable of changing strictly on their own, and I think in general we should
look first for language-internal solutions.  Since even American Spanish uses
_a_ before personal direct objects, as it does before indirect objects, it is
hardly surprising that Castillian would tend to use identical pronouns for all
personal objects, whether direct or indirect.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis