SV: accusative and ergative languages

[Fabrice Cavoto]

I think that what Patrick refers to is that many typologists mean that the
evolution 'ergartive to accusative' is more commoun than the reverse,
without excluding it.

As Larry Trask suggests, ergativity may well been understood like any other
feature: it can come and/or go, with or without leaving traces, like a
mode.

What typologists base their statement (above) is that many accusative
languages are said to have traces of ergativity (which they assume from an
earlier stage), while the contrary does not seem to be that commoun. Also,
those languages which have both systems productive seem to have accusative
structure in the most direct and unmarked speech, and ergative in the most
undirect/marked speech, AS IF they had 'forgotten' to change the system
there. However, this is highly speculative, since ergativity, as any other
lgge. feature, may well be used as  (part of) a distinctive parameter, were
it syntactical, prosod. or what ever, and then might concern only specific
parts of the speech. However, it seems that there is too less to see in IE:
maybe one could assume that if there once has been an ergative system in
IE, no matter how broad/exclusive it was at the very beginning, it was at
its latest stages restricted to the dichotomy 'animate vs. inanimate',
before it was totally lost.

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----

[ moderator snip ]