Personal Pronouns / Ergativity

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Eduard, Roz, and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Eduard Selleslagh <edsel at glo.be>
Sent: Saturday, June 05, 1999 7:38 AM

-----Original Message-----
From: rfrank <rfrank at uva.es>
To: edsel at glo.be <edsel at glo.be>
Date: Friday, June 04, 1999 12:54 PM
Subject: Re: Personal Pronouns / Ergativity

<snip>

Roz wrote:

> Without going into a prolonged discussion of the comments above, I
> would state that based on my knowledge of a historically attested ergative
> language, namely, Euskera (Basque), the statements above entail several
> assumptions or premises which may not be appicable to the case at hand,
> i.e., to reconstructing the *ergative stage(s) of PIE.

> 1) First, the comments assume that the ergative stage in question or perhaps
> better stated, the ergative languages that preceeded and/or contributed the
> hypothetical ergative feature(s) to PIE, had such an animate/inanimate
> division (and/or tripartite division with the neuter) and further that as
> such the conceptual or cognitive frame governing or defining the
> animate/inanimate division was essentially identical to the one that is
> employed by IE speakers today. That is an assumption.

Pat comments:

It certainly is not necessary to suppose that the items in the categories
animate/inanimate as conceptualized by speakers of IE languages today
correspond identically to the items once held by speakers of IE to be
animate or inanimate.

However, the terms will have had the same conceptual basis: animate,
"denoting a noun or noun phrase which is perceived as referring to a
conscious, volitional entity, a human or higher animal." Inanimate,
obviously, the opposite.

IE: wind, +animate; English: wind, -animate.

It appears to me that you are confusing the inventory of items in the
category with the definition of the category.

Roz continued:

> 2) Then there is the assumption that animacy is somehow a requirement for
> agency.

Pat comments:

An "agent" can be profitably defined as "the conscious instigator of an
action". Animacy is the quality of a "conscious, volitional entity". Any
language or human that does not assume "animacy" for "agents" is best spoken
in a closed institution.

I assume that you had "instrumentality" in mind when you wrote this but I
think it would be desirable for you to distinguish what the proper
linguistic use of "agency" and "instrumentality" are.

Roz continued:

> 3) And further that the only recourse that an ergative language has/might
> have for marking the notion of agency is by means of the ergative.

Pat commented:

We all know (primarily?) ergative languages in which agency can be expressed
by ergative case-endings in some contexts and by nominative or instrumental
(etal.) case-endings in other contexts so I think you have misinterpreted
the statements made.

Roz finished:

> If applied to the case of Euskera all three of these assumptions would be
> false.

Pat comments:

I am under the impression that Basque "animate NPs form their local cases in
a different manner from inanimate NPs" which seems to substantiate these
categories for Basque, however idiosyncratically they may be itemized.

In addition, I am under the impression that, in Basque, "the ergative case
is used for the subject of a transitive verb", and that "it has no other
function".

Of course, I would defer to Larry Trask's opinions on Basque.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN (501) 227-9947; FAX/DATA (501)312-9947 9115 W. 34th St.
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