Personal Pronouns / Ergativity

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

Wolfgang Schulze wrote:

>>Evidently, this paradigm does not reflect any kind of ERG strategy. Such
>>a strategy often has been inferred from the fact that the {S=A}-marker
>>*-s seems to have something in common with the genitive (singular (!))
>>(*-es, *-os, *-s). From this some kind of 'genitivus-ergativus' had been
>>reconstructed from Pre-IE. Naturally, a genitivus-ergativus is attested
>>in a considerable number of languages (Yupik-Eskimo, Lak (East
>>Caucasian), to name only two). However, again IE *-s does not behave
>>ERG, even IF we can associate it with the genitive marker (singular):
>>*-(e/o)s also encodes the S-function, which is ANTI ERG.

To which Ed Selleslagh responded:

>As you well know German uses such a genitivus-ergativus case with the
>passive (and in other constructions, to point at the author), albeit
>periphrastically, with the preposition 'von', which could just as well be
>called 'ablativus-ergativus', the genitive and the ablative both being
>'pointers' to the origin of the action. Note the similarity of the Latin
>construction : passive + a(b) + ablative. So, it seems that the need for
>some (pseudo-?)ergative way of speaking is still lingering on in IE
>languages.

that's pushing it a bit far.  German also uses _durch_ 'through' for this
purpose, mainly for less active participants.  English uses _by_.  Ancient
Greek used _hypo_ 'under'.  And so it goes.  But what do these have in common?
Surely not a tendency toward a combined ergative-genitive case.  Rather, we
have the phenomenon that languages have definite ideas about which prepositions
are appropriate for non-local functions, but their choices are largely
arbitrary and differ from language to language (or region to region).  Most
Americans wait *for* the bus, but people in Memphis can also wait *on* the bus
to come.  Germans wait _auf den Bus_ -- *onto* the bus.  I often tell my German
students: "Never trust a preposition."  That's exaggerated, of course, but a
useful warning to them *not* to translate English usage into German.

Meanwhile, we wait for, or on, or onto, or even simply await, a better
explanation of agentive _von_ in German.

Leo

>In Basque (an agglutinating ergative language), both the ablative and the
>ergative case contain the -k ending, which also occurs in the nominative
>plural, in my view derived from a construction implying a kind of
>'genitivus/ablativus partitivus' (cf. French 'des gens'; Lat. 'de' also had
>an 'ablative meaning'!).

>Ed.

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis