accusative and ergative languages

[Nik Taylor]

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> whereas in Language B: noun(B)+acc. verb is *ungrammatical*.

Oh?  So then, Latin is ergative?  You can have sentences like "Marcum
videt" = "[he] sees Mark", which is an accusative and a verb, and
nothing else.  Yet, Latin is clearly not ergative.

> A sequence like: "Me hurt. Tommy did it" is a virtual ergative so far as I
> would judge. I have heard children speak in this way.

How so?  Looks accusative to me, with the caviat that "Me" is used for
both nominative and accusative.  If children's language were truly
"ergative", you'd expect to have "Me hurt", but "I did it" (that is, Me
= absolutive, I = ergative), does this occur?  Granted, I'm not an
expert in language acquisition, but I don't believe that occurs.

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