Personal Pronouns / Ergativity

[petegray]

Wolfgang wrote a full reply to my suggestion of three places where IE might
have been ergative.   I appreciated the comments about the variation over
time, and about the fact that languages are almost never purely ergative or
accusative.    I am responding to one point in particular.   On the identity
of nominative and accusative for all neuters, he said:

> The only thing we can conclude from this is
> that true neuters rarely show up as agents (that they hardly ever played
> the role of a subjective (S) or agentive (A) except in a metaphorical
> sense). Neutral NPs hence are very likely to represents objectives (O).
> This is very natural - it tells us nothing about [where IE lies on a
> continuum of ergativitiy and accusativity]

Perhaps I fail to understand.   Did you mean to count both subjective and
agentive as "agents", and say that it was natural that inanimates should not
play that role?   If pre-IE had an animate / inanimate distinction, we can
believe that inanimates might never or very rarely be agents, but it is more
difficult to believe they were never subjects.   I find it difficult to
believe that in a language which produced PIE, Mr IE was unable to say to
Mrs IE, "The <inanimate thing> is nice (or dangerous, or whatever)."

It is precisely the use of an objective form for the subject-topic of a
stative sentence which leads some people to argue that there are hints of an
earlier ergative stage here.

Have I missed something in your argument?

Peter