Re: [TIED] IE, AA, Nostratic and Ringo

It's the birthday of the United States today. And I'm at home having a
picnic with my cat. Dad's in Alaska and it's raining.

>From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>

[me]

> > Possible evidence of an "ergative" system for neuters. (I thought the
> > neuter plural merged with the feminine singular. Or is it just that one
> > case, nominative?)

>Yes, the idea that the PIE system developed from an ergative one
>has been in circulation since the end of the 19th century. At that
>period the best-known examples of ergative systems were those of
>various Caucasian languages and of Basque. As we know at
>present, there are different shades of "ergativity" -- a whole
>spectrum is very nicely illustrated by the various Australian
>languages. Some of them bear a strong typological resemblance to
>what's reconstructed for PIE.

Georgian and Kartvelian in general has an "ergative-like" system, but it's
merely a formal one. North Caucasian and Basque ergativity on the other and
is functional. Georgian ultimately isn't all that different in the dynamics
of case formation, except the subject can be one of three cases: nominative,
ergative (or "narrative") and dative [?]. (I suspect a merger of possible
Proto-Kartvelian accusative and dative, but I don't know a thing about
Mingrelian, Laz and Svan.)

Australian languages IIRC have a "split-ergative" system, where ergative
subject and absolutive (nominative?) predicate occur with third-person
subject nouns.

And I sure wish I was in Australia where's it's winter. Texas sure gets hot
in July...

>Neuter "plurals" could be used with a singular verb even in Greek
>and Sanskrit. Collective formations involving *-j- occur e.g. in Slavic
>(*list-ij-e 'foliage' vs. *list-U 'leaf'), which explains why this stem
>extension was employed in neuter duals as well as (occasionally)
>in neuter "plurals" (*-j-ax). An special type of stress-shifting
>collective (or rather "augmentative"?) formation can be seen in
>ancient neuters like *wodr vs. *wedo:r 'water' (reflected in Hittite).

Sort of a "fourth number", collective, alongside a vestigial ergative.
(BTW, A four-number system of singular-dual-plural-collective has already
appeared in some local dialects of Arabic. But IE of course doesn't have
ergative or collective other than in pure form with no function.)

Now who wants some barbecue?

Daniel A. Wier ����
Lufkin, Texas USA
http://communities.msn.com/dawier/
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