Miguel:
>4) the split-ergative model. Pure ergative languages are rare. Most
>"ergative" languages in fact show a mix of ergative and accusative. I
>mentioned the case of modern Indo-Aryan languages, which are partially
>ergative (in the past tense) but otherwise accusativic. Another
>common split-ergative system depends on degrees of animacy.
Well, I guess this would be my view. The accusative is marked by *-m for
animates only. Inanimates were unmarked for the accusative because
they couldn't be the subject of a transitive verb (so therefore there is no
need for special marking to contrast it with the nominative in which it
never occurs). However, this is where an ergative sentence can come
in very handy because inevitably you'll want to express an inanimate
subject. How does one do it without really doing it??
Well, instead of saying "The wind blew him over" where the inanimate wind
is acting as subject (oh my god!) and appears to be acting on somebody,
we would have to use an ergative sentence that effectively means
"By the wind, he was blown over." This way, "the wind" is not really the
"subject" ("he" is the subject) nor is "wind" marked with the nominative.
Instead of looking at the sentence in terms of subject/object, we look at
the sentence in terms of ergativity where "wind" is the agent and "she" is
the patient. It should also be noted that the verb is not specially unmarked
for passiveness, but rather implied by the syntax of the sentence. Ain't
that cool? You don't even need a passive verb!
Nothing in the above rule says that you can't have an inanimate _agent_.
So we can see that ergative sentences and inanimate agents are an
effective way around the loophole of disallowed inanimate subjects.
What does all this mean for the origin of the nominative? It means that
*-s doesn't have much to do with the genitive *-os at all, nor does the
ergative model you present sufficiently demonstrate how a single case
marker splits into two very divergent functions, nominative and genitive,
with two different forms (one with *o, the other without). Nice theory
from afar, but far from nice.
- gLeN
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