accusative and ergative languages

[Leo A. Connolly]

Larry Trask wrote, replying to Pat:

> But briefly: if a transitive sentence in an ergative language were
> "really" a passive, then its absolutive NP would be the subject and
> would exhibit subject properties.  But this not the case in most of the
> ergative languages I have heard about.  In spite of the ergative
> case-marking and/or verbal agreement, it is usually the *ergative* NP
> which exhibits subject properties, not the absolutive NP.

Agreed -- and yet not quite agreed.  Are these really "subject
properties"?  I freely acknowledge that that's what they're called, but
for mainly
for lack of any better name in normal linguistic terminology.

It might be better to take the tack that I did in my recent post "On
interpreting ergative languages": that one must distinguist between a
"morphological subject" (the absolutive or nominative, or positional
equivalent in languages such as English), and the "highest-ranking NP"
in a hierarchy of the Case Grammar sort.  Then it turns out that even in
accusative languages, some properties adhere to the morphological
subject, others to the HRNP, the split varying greatly from one language
to another.  In most ergative languages (which can then be defined
simply as languages with extensive ergative casemarking), it is the HRNP
that has all or most of the syntactic "subject properties".  But there
is no particular reason to call it a "subject".

True enough: to some extent, this is a matter of terminology.  But I
think it matters in this sense: unlike the morphological subject, the
HRNP is not constituted, but is given by the Case Hierarchy; it may,
however, be demoted by use of a passive construction.  "Active"
languages are then explained naturally: they have no morphological
subject, only the HRNP, whose realization notoriously varies.

	[stuff omitted]

> There are unusual languages, of course.  In Dyirbal, and in
> Nass-Gitksan, the absolutive NP in a transitive sentence shows at least
> some subject properties, while the ergative NP does not show the same
> properties -- though it does show other subject properties.  This is the
> phenomenon we call `syntactic ergativity'.  But I know of no language
> which is syntactically ergative without exception, and I know of few
> languages which are syntactically ergative at all.

I have gone through Dixon's book on Dyirbal pretty thoroughly and don't
recall any accusative or active syntax, only a few accusative pronouns
(which exhibit ergative syntax).

> The "passive" view of ergative languages in general is indefensible.

Absolutely agreed!

Leo