Personal Pronouns / Ergativity

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

-----Original Message-----
From: Carol F. Justus <cjustus at mail.utexas.edu>
Date: Tuesday, June 15, 1999 3:47 AM

[snip]

>This stative was not productive in PIE (see the issue of 'have' in the
>Lehmann Fs.). The root 'sit' in fact is most interesting here. Hittite
>'sit' is derived as middle of 'be': eszi 'is', esa(ri) 'sits'. With -za
>(often called a reflexive particle) in New Hittite then the combination -za
>esari means 'take a seat, sit down' (with sakki 'knows', -za sakki means
>'acknowledges'). With the root *es- there was no need of a "stative"
>suffix, nor was there with middles, Greek he:stai, Sanskrit a:ste 'sits'.
>But the 'active' root *sed- 'sit' was another matter. In Latin the stative
>is very productive in its second conjugation -e:- verbs (habe:re 'have',
>sede:re 'sit' etc.). But its use there is part of a different verbal
>system, one in which there is a productive passive voice. These -e:-
>statives are often syntactically transitive but semantically stative, e.g.
>'have': librum habet (see Bauer in HS?).

[Ed Selleslagh]

It seems to me - a non-specialist - that two Castilian constructions might
be related to this.

1. the expression 'estáte quieto' (keep, stay, remain...quiet), remarkable
because 'estar' is already stative and clearly intransitive and not
susceptible to becoming reflexive; so I presume it is to be interpreted as
medio-passive.  But what mental process and/or grammatical 'reasoning' is
behind it?

2. the formally reflexive use of transitive verbs in Castilian that has exact
parallels in (modern) Greek medio-passive: 'se prohibe (in older Spanish:
prohibese) la entrada' (Greek: apagoréyetai he: éisodos (pron.
/apagorévete i ísodhos/) or 'vendese esta casa' or 'enjuáguese el
envase'.  You also have the parallel 'encontrar / encontrarse' - 'brísko:
(/vrísko/) / brískomai (/vrískome/)' .

Any comments?

Ed.