O-only agreement

[Malcolm Ross]

Dear Peter,

I think Roviana (Oceanic Austronesian) meets your criterion for  O- 
only agreement. See

Simon H. Corston, 1996, Ergativity in Roviana. Canberra: Pacific  
Linguistics (Pacific Linguistics B-113).

Simon Corston-Oliver, 2002, Roviana. In John Lynch, Malcolm Ross &  
Terry Crowley, The Oceanic languages, 467--497. Richmond UK: Curzon.

- Malcolm
_____________________________________

Emeritus Professor Malcolm Ross
Department of Linguistics
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Building No. 9, The Australian National University
CANBERRA A.C.T. 0200, Australia



On 19/09/2009, at 11:51 PM, peterarkadiev wrote:

> Dear typologists,
>
> while Paul Hopper has come up with an example of A-only agreement in  
> Malay (see references below), I ask a follow-up question concerning  
> the mirror-image situation: are there any languages where the verb  
> would agree exclusively with the transitive O (patient, undergoer,  
> direct object), but neither with the transitive A nor with the  
> intransitive S?
>
> Many thanks and best wishes,
>
> Peter Arkadiev
>
>
> Paul J. Hopper, 1987 Stability and change in VN/NV Alternating  
> Languages:
> A study in pragmatics and linguistic typology. In M. Bertuccelli  
> Papi and
> J.Verscheuren, eds., The Pragmatic Perspective, 455-476. Amsterdam:  
> John
> Benjamins.
>
> Paul J. Hopper, 1983 Ergative, passive, and active in Malay narrative
> discourse. In F. Klein-Andreu, ed., Discourse Perspectives on Syntax,
> 64-87. New York: Academic Press.