Re: understanding ergativity

John Atkinson:

>
> "Lukas Pietsch" <lukas.pietsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...
>
>> Joachim Pense wrote:
>>> Having read some elementary descriptions of what an ergative language
>>> is, I
>>> try the following gedankenexperiment.
>>>
>>> Take Latin, as it is, but apply one minor change:
>>> For transitive sentences, make the passive the unmarked form, and active
>>> the
>>> marked one, that is, assume that people prefer to say
>>>
>>> (A) frater sorore laudatur
>>>
>>> rather than
>>>
>>> (B) soror fratrem laudat
>>>
>
....
>
> I notice that, for the impersonal agent of a passive, old-Latin uses the
> ablative case, which of course will become the ergative case in erg-Latin.
> Fine. But for personal agents, Latin normally uses a prepositional phrase
> (with "ab"), which seems unnatural for a core NP. I suggest that in
> erg-Latin personal agents have the same form as impersonal ones, with no
> preposition. (This is of course what you've actually done in (A) above.)

probably because my Latin needs a bit of refreshing :-/ Well, I've got a
chance, my daughter has Latin lessons in school for a year now.

Joachim
.

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