> 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