accusative and ergative languages

[Vidhyanath Rao]

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

> I'd say the cases I have seen of ergativity in Indic and Iranian languages
> so clearly reflect underlying/earlier passive circumlocutions that
> controversy is absurd.

No!

I have already pointed out the problem of distinguishing resultatives and
passives. The ta-adjective is resultative in Vedic (Jamison, IIJ 198?) and
Early Pali (Hendrikson, Infinite verb forms of Pali). And it patterns
ergatively as resultative participles often do. The last part has been known
forever. In English, see Speyer's ``Sanskrit Syntax'', will find the
following: ``Of the participles in -ta the great majority have a passive
meaning, hence it is customary to call the whole class the passive
participle of the past. But some others are not passives, but intransitives,
as gata (gone), m.rta (died) [rather dead, VKR] bhinna (split). Some again
may even be transitive actives, as pi:ta (having drunk) [better drunk, but
without the restriction to a special meaning in English] ...'' [para 360, p.
280].  Speyer goes on to note a:ru:d.ha has active meaning more commonly.
This is not how we expect the passive to behave. But for resultative, it is
understandable. The ergative patterning is based on pragmatics. But in a
culture that considers it more worthy of note whether a man is mounted on a
horse or a vehicle than whether a horse or a vehicle is carrying someone, it
makes sense to use a:ru:d.ha in the active sense.

The difference is unmistakable in the following:

(1) ra:mo 's'vam a:ru:d.hah.
    R is mounted on [a] horse.

(2) ra:men.a+as'vam a:ruhyate
   [A] horse is being mounted by R.

(3) *ra:mo 's'vam a:ruhyate

(1) and (2) are quite grammatical and examples of easy to come by. (3) does
not occur and is underivable in traditional grammar. As I explained above,
this is understandable if a:ru:d.ha is resultative. If we take the passive
view, how do we explain the fact that (1) is acceptable but (3) is not?
Without such an explanation, it is far from absurd to contest the passive
interpreation.