From: Gerry Reinhart-Waller
Message: 1481
Date: 2000-02-13
>Guillaume asks whether there is a difference between ergative and
> > 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.
> >
> The question is : is there a real opposition between ergative and
> nominative languages ? Ergative languages tend to be more or less
> nominative to some extend, georgian is a perfect example, as is tibetan
> : the semantics of intransitive verbs will sometimes mark the subject
> with the ergative, especially when the action is controlled. On the
> opposite, nomnative languages that know passive-active opposition are
> in a way "more or less" ergative.
> Some languages (tabarassan, a North-West caucasian languages) are both
> fully ergative and fully nomnatives, I heard (S. Anderson, A-morphous
> morphology, 1994).
>
> Guillaume
>
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