accusative and ergative languages

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Friday, July 16, 1999 5:50 PM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>> And to answer your -- I hope not purposeful -- distortion of what I wrote,
>> let me say explicitly that I did not assert "there are ergative languages
>> without (any) splits". I asserted that Thomsen did not, at least in her
>> grammar, identify splits in Sumerian, which you seemed to think she had.

Miguel wrote:

> Of course she has, unless your edition differs from mine: p. 51,
> paragraph 42:

> On the morphological level Sumerian has thus an ergative
>   system in the nouns and the intransitive vs. the
> transitive hamTu conjugation [...]. In the pronouns and
> the transitive maru^ conjugation vs. the intransitive
> verb, on the other hand, the system is nominative-
> accusative [...].
> This `split ergativity' is no uncommon phenomenon, in
> fact no ergative language is entirely ergative in both
> syntax and morphology.

Pat responds:

Yes, Miguel, she did write that. In the foregoing paragraph or so, she gives
a concocted example of a transitive maru: sentence:

za-e sag{~}-0 mu-zi.zi-en    you (sing.) raise the head

In this so-called "nominative-accusative" sentence, -e is the normal
termination of the ergative case, so, by form, za-e is 'you (sing.) ERG'; -0
is the normal termination of the absolutive case, so, by form, sag{~}-0 is
'head ABS'.

No, I suppose, it is also possible but fruitless to argue that -e is both
ERGATIVE and NOMINATIVE and -0 is both ABSOLUTIVE and ACCUSATIVE but what
real purpose does that serve except to play games?

I am also sure that you know that the termination -en of the verb above,
which is supposed to cross-reference the transitive maru: subject does *not*
exist in Old Sumerian (presumably before Akkadian scribes messed it up too
much).

One could always argue that the termination -e, which does exist in Old
Sumerian, was a cross-reference to the nominative subject. Is that what you
believe?

So, in conclusion, though Thomsen does mention them, she certainly did not
identify "splits" in Sumerian.

Pat

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