accusative and ergative languages

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 1999 11:13 AM

>>> On Thu, 27 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>>> [...] I would go an unpalatable to some step further, and, agree with
>>>> G. A. Klimov, that an ergative form *must* precede an accusative type.

Jens objected:

>>> There are some quite obvious counterexamples: Modern Indic is very close to
>>> being ergative; Kurdish too; Lithuanian is well on its way; and Eskimo has
>>> accusative remains in the pronouns. Also, the "have/be" periphrasis of
>>> perfect tense in Western Europe have passed through a stage of plain
>>> ergative syntax with this part of the verb. In all of these examples that
>>> ergative has plainly arisen from a passive transformation:  The event was
>>> described from the point of view of what happened to the object, and in
>>> course of time this nuance was suppressed and the "ergative" structure
>>> generalized to the point of ousting the old finite (subject-centered) verb.
>>> This view is often criticized for being based on the analyst's inability to
>>> think in terms of foreign categories, a criticism that completely ignores
>>> the fact that the categories concerned are in this instance not at all
>>> foreign to us.

I do not think you are responding to what I am saying. Your examples suggest
to me that you are under the impression that I denied that ergative
structure could develop from accusative structure. I did not say that nor do
I believe that. I do continue to believe that any language which is
presently or has been accusative must have gone through an ergative stage
sometime prior to that in its development.

For most transitive verbs, I believe the closest connection is between it
and its object so that, at some stage of development, an unmarked verb form
should represent a passive. To try to understand ergative constructions from
passive inflections developed in languages in accusative stages seems to me
to be potentially misleading.

Pat

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