Re: [tied] Re: Accusative was allative

tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> No, I'm not. I claim the old ergative became a nominative and the
> old absolutive became an accusative at the time PIE became an
> accusative language. That is not a double shift of case endings,
> it's not even one, it's the automatic consequence of the language
> changing type
> (unless you want to argue that using *-s, the former-ergative-now
> nominative suffix for the subject of intransitive sentences, is a
> change of ending, which it isn't). Perhaps you should read up on
> ergative languages?

I don't have my books at hand, but I seem to remember that Dixon ("Ergativity") states somewhere that while we can have a marked nominative (in accusativic languages), there is no such thing as a marked absolutive (in ergativic languages). That would speak against a development absolutive -> accusative as the origin of PIE *-m.

When a language changes type, from accusativic to ergativic, or from ergativic to accusativic, the development is hardly ever one of simple inversion of the case endings.

If we consider the passive/antipassive route from one type to another, we have:

1. acc. => erg. (through passive: "I-NOM see the-dog-ACC ~ The-dog-NOM is-seen by-me-INS")
new ergative = old instrumental (vel sim.)
new absolutive = old nominative
the old accusative is lost.

2. erg. => acc. (through antipassive: "I-ERG see the-dog-ABS ~ I-NOM look at-the-dog-LOC)
new nominative = old absolutive
new accusative = old locative case (vel sim.)
the old ergative is lost.

--
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal