SV: SV: accusative and ergative languages

[Fabrice Cavoto]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>>From yours and Larry's statements, it certainly sounds like ergativity
>is a feature that you can add to and take away from any language, and
>when it's not there, the language has the default type of accusative.

[Fabrice Cavoto]

This is certainly not what I ment. You can't 'just add or
take away' ergativity from a lgge. Observing it, you see if the lgge. you
are dealing with is ergative or not, or if it has some ergative features
restricted to some specific parts (as the continuum to which Dr. Wolfgang
Schulze refers to) or not.

I know that some do consider the one or the other type as the
'default-type'. I only can agree with this when speaking of structures
within the SAME lgge., f.ex. if the shift to the other type is found only
as an additional marking for a specific part of speech. So I agree with you
that it is not correct to say that 'when a lgge. is not ergative, it has
the 'default accusative type''.