Personal Pronouns / Ergativity

[Eduard Selleslagh]

-----Original Message-----
From: Inaki Agirre Perez <inaki.agirre at si.unirioja.es>
Date: Friday, June 04, 1999 6:28 AM

>> In Basque (an agglutinating ergative language), both the ablative and the
>> ergative case contain the -k ending, which also occurs in the nominative
>> plural, in my view derived from a construction implying a kind of
>> 'genitivus/ablativus partitivus' (cf. French 'des gens'; Lat. 'de' also
>> had an 'ablative meaning'!).

>Could you be clearer about this point, Ed? Basque ergative case is s.
>-AK pl. -EK, both from *-EGAK if I recall it right. Ablative is s. -TIK
>and partitive is -IK. They have a very close meaning in NPs like 'one of
>you', say ZUETARIK BAT = ZUETATIK BAT, but I don't grasp the point with
>ergative or nominative.

>Iñaki

[Ed]
I tried to be clear by saying 'containing the ending -k' and 'a
construction', but obviously failed.  What I meant is that the complete,
very probably composite, suffixes/endings all contain the final segment -k,
which I believe has some basic ablative/genitive(of origin) meaning that
manifests itself in the various grammatical cases I mentioned. It may also
be present in the 'genitive' (of origin) suffix -ko; I even dare suggest
that -ko might be the 'autonomous' form (i.e. not in fused composite
suffixes) of -k.

My point is that all the cases I mentioned have in common the fact that they
point to an origin, be it of an action (ergative case), a geographical place
(ablative and genitive of origin) or a group/category (partitive,
(indefinite) plural).

As an additional remark: it is quite remarkable that this -k and -ko also
occur in Slavic languages, as derivation suffixes in very related
contexts/meanings (-(j)ak, -ik, -ko). And in Greek : -(i)akós.

Ed.