accusative and ergative languages

[petegray]

>> English `sing', `sang', `sung'.

> Pat responds:
> 2) The variation i-a-u is *not* an internal inflection but rather a
> phonological response to now missing former inflections;

Its origin does not affect how it operates today.   It remains an "internal
inflection" now wherever it came from.   And actually, despite some text
books, this pattern is indeed a direct survival of the PIE ablaut.

IE roots of the kind CRC had the ablauts CeRC, CoRC, CR.C.   The first
appears in the Germanic present, the second in the past singular, the third
in the past plural and the past participle (remember that PIE /o/ appears as
/a/ in Germanic).  After standardisation of the vowel of the past, we find
in modern German:
    werfen    warf    geworfen
    helfen    half        geholfen
    beginnen, begann, begonnen
and singen, sinnken, springen, trinken, rinnen, spinnen etc etc etc
and in modern English:
    sing sang sung
    sink sank sunk
etc etc etc etc.

Some Germanic ablaut is indeed the result of "vowel harmony" with a vowel in
an ending which has since been lost - but this example is not one.

Peter