Patrick:
> There is nothing at all to lead one to the idea that -*m is derived from
>an ergative case. Ergative is simply an alternate method of marking the
>agent in a transitive construction.
(I'm responding not to Patrick but to the others that may be
understandably confused by Pat's ever-strange statements.)
More specifically, languages operating with the nominative and
accusative cases focus on the subject and object of a verb while
those languages using ergative and absolutive cases focus on the
agent and the patient of a verb.
The "subject" of a verb and the "agent" of the verb are not the
same thing. For instance, in the sentence "I was slapped by Mary",
the subject is "I" while the agent is "Mary", the one who perfomed
the action. However, in the sentence "I slapped Mary", the subject
and the agent are both "I".
Languages *slowly* move from ergative-absolutive case marking
to nominative-accusative marking and they do not give up
ergativity cold turkey. Such is the deal with IndoTyrrhenian
which would have certainly used nominative & accusative cases
while still using ergative-style sentences. The agent here was
expressed via the _genitive_ case and the patient was in the
unmarked oblique (later the IE nominative, locative and vocative).
> Rather, if the two arguments of a transitive verb are both
>animate, -*m would identify the non-agent, i.e. the absolutive.
Wrong. The *m-accusative could only have once marked the
*ergative* case, that is, the _agent_ of the transitive verb.
Within the Nostratic hypothesis, the *m-ergative that survives
in Kartvelian provides testimony to this assertion and Kerns
already has published on an ergative particle *ma for Nostratic,
so it ain't just little ol' me.
The original state of affairs (in Nostratic) was the following
where there were two sentence patterns based on the transitivity
of the verb:
1) transitive verb:
AGENT-m PATIENT-0 VERB
2) intransitive verb:
PATIENT-0 VERB
eg 1: John-by you slap
"You have been slapped by John."
(The verb functions like a passive.)
eg 2: You slap
"You slap."
(The verb functions like an active.)
After some time, the unmarked absolutive marking the agent, came
to always mark the *subject*. In other words, there was a shift
of focus from agent/patient marking to subject/object marking.
The verb no longer alternated semantically between active and
passive, but rather retained active meaning throughout. (This is
also coincidentally the point at which two dissimilar pronominal
sets of endings were forming to mark verb transitivity, starting
at around 12000 BCE. This odd state of affairs of suppletive
verb endings would continue to survive all the way to IE.)
By the time, IndoTyrrhenian came about c.7000 BCE, there were
three noteworthy sentence patterns:
1) transitive active:
SUBJECT-0 OBJECT-m VERB
2) intransitive active:
SUBJECT-0 VERB
3) passive:
PATIENT-0 AGENT-se VERB
(SUBJECT-0 OBJECT-se VERB)
Just to drill this whole theoretical package home, it's interesting
to note that the passive "ergative-style" sentence pattern is oh
so handy for expressing an inanimate agent without dealing with
the pesky "no inanimate subject" rule. Again, since the agent
and subject are *not* the same in the passive sentence pattern,
we get away with this scott free. To say "The wind knocked me over"
in IndoTyrrhenian, you'd have to say "I was knocked over by the
wind.". In the sentence "Mary knocked me over.", the passive
sentence pattern is unneeded because the subject is animate.
Clever those ITs, huh?
> Thus, a nominative -*s and accusative *-m in IE is redundant.
Another Paticism, if I've ever heard one. In all, I don't frankly
care what Pat is mumbling here. What I've said above should
clarify everything.
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...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!
home:
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