Re: Kabardian antipassives

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> Okay. I finally uncovered the article online, Jens:
> http://www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/q1025_lecture_8.pdf
>
> "In Kabardian (Caucasus) (8) the antipassive indicates uncompleted

or

> habitual activity, or a non-specific patient. Both of these

phenomena

> correspond to the concept `less than prototypically transitive'."
>
> I think that is a pretty clear statement. So, as I said, claiming

that

> the *-e found at the end of IE perfects once functioned as an
> "antipassive" of all things would produce the exact opposite

effect of

> what we're after, which is a _completed_ activity. It also is

completely

> contrary to an accusative-style language to have an antipassive.

The

> underlying stage of IE shows a bare nominative and an animate

accusative

> marked with *-m. No ergative case, no absolutive case.

Thank you for the clarification. I'm sure it's correct that a verbal
predicate of an antipassive (the "semitransitive"
or "halftransitive" of Eskimo grammar) is typically
uncompleted: "The dog ate the meat" would have the dog in the
ergative, while the antipassive construction would mean "the dog was
eating at some meat", I see that very clearly now (about time too
you might say).

I still have some difficulty with the relevance for the point under
discussion. I was trying in all fairness to salvage your idea that
the *-e of the perfect endings was a general object marker added to
a verbal form which typically had no specific object, an analysis
which would make the perfect an antipassive. You do not like that
analysis, and I see nothing much going for it either, so your
analysis cannot be given this rationale. Just don't say I didn't try.

Jens