Ergative vs. accusative

CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU
Wed Jun 23 15:50:06 UTC 1999


Pat responded to Larry:

>I do believe that the term 'ergative language' has a real value in
>linguistic analysis --- to differentiate two basic approaches to
>transitive constructions:

[1]
>Language A: Noun(A)+erg. noun(B)+abs. verb
>will be interpreted as A performs an activity on B.

[2]
>Language B: Noun(A)+nom. noun(B)+acc. verb
>will be interpreted as A performs an activity on B.

[3]
>However, in Language A, noun(B)+abs. verb
>will be interpreted as an activity is performed by an unspecified
>agent on B

[4]
>whereas in Language B: noun(B)+acc. verb is *ungrammatical*.

All well and good, so far as the first two sentences are concerned.  However,
what you said about combining this verb with the patient alone simply isn't
true.  Some ergative languages happily omit the agent, others do not.  So what
I've numbered [3] above will be legal in some ergative languages but not in
others.

Conversely, [4] is perfectly grammatical in many accusative languages.
Couldn't think of an example good enough to convince you.  But look at this
post.  Must've seen stuff like this before, right?

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis



More information about the Indo-european mailing list