Re: [tied] Nominative: A hybrid view

On Sun, 25 May 2003 08:36:31 +0000, magwich78 <magwich78@...>
wrote:

Just a few comments...

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>>
>> That does not explain why the object is also marked in PIE, nor how
>> intransitive subjects acquired ergative-marking.
>
>Certainly these are legitimate concerns that you've brought up. The
>hour is late right now, but I'd like to try to address the points
>you've made.
>
>In many languages, there is redundancy in expressing subjects,
>objects, and/or etc. Some examples: Spanish marks animate objects of
>verbs with the preposition "a"; Georgian often markes objects with
>the dative case (-s[a]);

Georgian also marks subjects with the dative case (in verbs of feeling
and thinking [cf. "methinks" or "mir ist kalt"] and in the whole
perfect). The Georgian system is:

present aorist perfect
intr.subject -0 -0 -s
tr. subject -0 -m(a) -s
tr. object -s -0 -0

>As Greenberg kindly pointed out, such a word-order usually means
>postpositions and modifiers preceding their heads. One conclusion
>reached from this is that the nominative endings of (late) PIE were
>likely not from an enclitic demonstrative pronoun, since
>demonstratives, being modifiers, would usually (if not always)
>precede their heads...

Not according to universal #966 at
http://ling.uni-konstanz.de:591/Universals/search.html

IF the definite article is distinct from demonstratives and object
follows verb, THEN the definite article precedes the noun. IF the
definite article is distinct from demonstratives and object precedes
verb, THEN the definite article follows the noun.

(DefArt !~ Dem) & VO => DefArt N; (DefArt !~ Dem) & OV => N DefArt

This is consistent with my personal impressions that an SOV language
like Basque has a postixed article, while SV


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...