Re: Basque/Georgian

junk

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").

Marc

Basque (and its ancestors) is unrelated to any other known language group. Basque is an ergative language. In contrast, all IE languages are nominative languges. Georgian, as best I understand, is also a nominative language, but has an auxiliary ergative structure apparently used for emphatic forms. Basque and Georgian are often mentioned together because of this. I'm told you need to learn some Basque before you can really appreciate the distinction between ergative and nominative languages. The usual contrast between nominative and accusative, and how the verb connects the two, as well as how the verb relates to what we term 'passivity' and 'transitivity', is quite different in an ergative language. In short, the noun in the subject position of a sentence in ergative languages inflects differently, depending on if the verb is transitive or not. Mark.