Re: Basque/Georgian

Gerry here:
John, your link on the ergative nature of PIE doesn't open.

Perhaps the following link might be useful

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Hall/9766/indoeuro/syntax.htm

What I've been able to understand so far is that all Indo-European
languages are nominative. Likely Proto Indo-European was ergative.
Nominative languages are examples of the subject doing the "acting" with
a transitive verb. Ergative languages are passive voice construction of
nominative languages. Basque and Georgian are ergative languages.

Whether Nostratic was ergative or nominative, I'd go with ergative but I
also don't have dictionaries because I'm not a professional linguist.

QUESTION: why are some languages ergative and others nominative? Does
the answer have anything to do with "master and slave"? This "wild"
question is looking for a "wild" answer.

Gerry
2/13/00


John Croft wrote:

>
> Mark wrote
> original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=1465
> > Beekes give some compelling arguments that PIE may have descended
> from an older ergative language, eg, the old genitive became used as
> the new nominative (the agent in a passive construction is often a
> genetive, eg, in German ("von") & Dutch dialects ("van").
>
> For a discussion on the ergative nature of PIE see
> http://www.dabis.at/Anwender.htm/Alscher/contents.htm
>
> Glen, any chance that Nostratic was also ergative?
>
> (Sorry I don't have dictionaries, I am not a professional linguist)
>
> Regards
>
> John
>
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Gerald Reinhart
Independent Scholar
(650) 321-7378
waluk@...
http://www.alekseevmanuscript.com