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<p>Yes, all this is confusing:<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 02.07.24 23:47, Juergen Bohnemeyer
wrote:<br>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">I’m
finding this discussion very interesting but
super-confusing. Can we clarify what it means for a language
to have “two transitive constructions”? By what properties
may these differ from one another, and why, in what sense,
and perhaps for whom would it be a problem if there are
languages that have them?</span></p>
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<p>For this reason, Creissels (2024) spends many pages in his
forthcoming book explaining how the notion of "transitive
construction" is defined
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/transitivity-valency-and-voice-9780198899570">https://global.oup.com/academic/product/transitivity-valency-and-voice-9780198899570</a>).</p>
<p>There is no consensus yet, though Creissels builds on Comrie,
Lazard and Haspelmath for defining the notions of S, A and P, and
this seems to be becoming the leading approach.</p>
<p>I have a recent paper where I define "ergative", "absolutive",
"accusative" and "nominative" in this general perspective
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006883">https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006883</a>), but the terms rely on
first identifying S, A and P.<br>
</p>
<p>According to Creissels, the instrumental-marked construction
would not count as transitive because it exhibits a "decrease in
semantic transitivity" – but Lazard and Haspelmath do not make use
of a notion of "semantic transitivity".</p>
<p>Instead, I have been (implicitly) relying on the idea of the
"major construction" being "dominant" in the sense of Dryer (2005,
in WALS): If it occurs two thirds of the time or more often, it is
THE transitive construction, and the transitive construction must
be dominant. If there is not one single dominant transitive
construction, the language lacks A and P (and thus cannot have
ergative or absolutive case etc). I recognize that this may be
perceived as too unusual, so I am unsure which direction to take. </p>
<p>However, in the case of word order, Dryer has firmly established
the idea that some languages simply lack a dominant order. Before
1992, many linguists thought that if a language has flexible
order, this must somehow relate to a single "underlying" order,
but there was no agreement on how to identify that order. So I
think that Dryer's approach to word order (where a dominant order
is identified by frequency of use, and where a language does not
have to have a dominant order) constituted conceptual progress.</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Martin</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></pre>
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