accusative and ergative languages

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

> Is this anything other than the accusative of goal?

If you take a:+ruh = climb onto.

> [...] I cannot see the relevance of this for a discussion
> of the question whether the ta-participle is passive or
> resultative: with transitive verbs it plainly is both, we
> are not that much is disagreement. - By the Modern Indic
> rules of agreement it does seem to me to be the passive
> (of transitive verbs, of course) that formed the pattern.
> Where am I wrong?

If a certain form, as far back as we can trace it, referred to the object of
transitive verbs, and the subject of intransitive verbs, are we obliged to
call it a passive, Especially when a different formation was used to form a
more conventional passive?

Anoterh question is why another passive, using the suffix ya (<*ye/o) was
created if the to-adjective was already being used for the passive?