accusative and ergative languages

[Larry Trask]

On Sat, 26 Jun 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[responses to selected points only]

[on my examples of languages which can delete subjects]

> "Overt" means 'open and observable', and the overt subject of the
> Spanish phrase is "he/she" indicated by -0 on [ha]; of the Latin
> phrase, 'he/she' indicated by -(i)t. I would think you might have
> understood that I was referring to languages which do not code the
> subject with affixes on the verb.

OK, then -- try Japanese.  Japanese does not code subjects in the verb,
and yet omission of the subject is perfectly normal in Japanese, but an
object is still interpreted as an object.

[PAR]

> In the sentence mentioned above:  "noun(B)+abs. verb", which is
> interpreted as an 'activity is performed by an unspecified agent on
> B' --- this construction perfectly meets the definition: "a
> construction in which an intrinsically transitive verb is construed
> in such a way that its underlying object as\ppears as its surface
> subject".; accordingly, it is "passive".

No, not so.  See below.

[LT]

>> For Basque, and for other ergative languages, the "passive" view of
>> transitive sentences can be shredded, point by devastating point.

[PAR]

> Perhaps we should reopen the question of where you have "shredded,
> point by devastating point" the view that "for Basque(, and for
> other ergative languages,) the "passive" view of transitive
> sentences". I saw nothing that I recognized as doing this in your
> Basque grammar.

That's probably because I haven't written a Basque grammar.
I have, however, written elsewhere on this point.

[on my Basque example]

>> Mutila jo zuen.
>> `He hit the boy.'

[PAR]

> Keine Endung ist auch eine Endung. Surely you must have run across
> that someplace. And your translation of "mutila jo zuen" as '(he)
> hit the boy' is not preferable to 'the boy was hit'.

Sorry, not so -- not so at all.

In English, the utterance `He hit the boy' is *only* possible in a
context in which `he' has already been identified: otherwise it's
gibberish.

And the same is true of Basque <Mutila jo zuen>: it is only possible in
a context in which the identity of the hitter is already known, and
otherwise it's gibberish.  In no context whatever could it be
interpreted as `The boy was hit'.  There *must* be an identified hitter
in the discourse.

To express `The boy was hit', Basque uses other constructions.  One
possibility is <Mutila jo zuten>.  This is literally `They hit the boy',
and it can be used to mean this, when the identity of `they' is known.
But equally it can mean `The boy was hit', in a context in which the
identity of the hitters is unknown.  In this case, it is functionally,
though not formally, identical to English `The boy was hit'.

But Basque also has an overt passive: <Mutila jo zen>.  This means
literally `The boy was hit', and it can be used with no hitter
identified.  Moreover, this construction does not allow the addition of
an overt agent: the Basque passive permits no agent.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk