accusative and ergative languages

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Richard M. Alderson III <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 1999 1:15 PM

> This flies in the face of reality.  Let's take an example from Latin, an
> easy example of a language with accusative morphology *and* syntax:

> Amicus videt. "The friend sees."
> Amicum videt. "(Some unspecified one) sees the friend."
> Amicus videtur. "The friend is seen (by an unspecified agent)."

> There is nothing ungrammatical in the sentence "amicum videt".

If I would have meant noun(B)+acc. verb+infl., I would surely have written
that.

The -t expresses the nominative subject in your sentence.

> This, of course, assumes that the verbs in question are transitive.  If they
> are *intransitive*, then your fourth example is correctly labeled as
> ungrammatical,

By the logic you seem to what to employ, it would not necessarily be:

Romam eo.

> but your third is ungrammatical in the sense you assign to it; it could only
> mean that B is the *subject* of the verb (whether performer of the action or
> entity in the state) in a language with ergative morphology and syntax.

Sorry, that is simply incorrect.

See Thomsen, p. 186:

Suku-bi u{3}-ul-gid{2}, 'after their food portions have been measured out' ...

Pat

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