accusative and ergative languages

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

> 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.

Is this anything other than the accusative of goal? You are right that
some ta-participles are not passive, namely those derived from
intransitive verbs (gata- like Eng. gone). I would take (1) to be
construed as to mean "Rama (is = Eng.) has climbed onto a horse". (2) must
mean "By Rama there is being climbed onto a horse". I do not know if you
can construe this particular verb so transitively that you can make its
passive have the patient in the nominative; trying my hand with the sandhi
rules, I make it come out as "ra:men.a+as'va a:ruhyate".  But is this not
the normal construction with the finite passive? - 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?

Jens