From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Feb 16 04:40:46 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:40:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LZ2mE-0002Hd-JK for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:40:46 -0800 Received: from mail-bw0-f205.google.com ([209.85.218.205]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LZ2m8-0002Gm-3Z for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:40:46 -0800 Received: by bwz1 with SMTP id 1so3191983bwz.10 for ; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:40:33 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=9XzT0coNr0FehYptf00GJofcIjKRwLYHF6dDU9TlSN4=; b=EMf+vWZ7OYz+fpfKPaBfqyy09VMPK2kIO5ywRq2z2/KGSnDF5lm39f2unsc3NGobUE fUNHoPEAtxbk+PA7RjqxkSkn21jHgdoDIQVfdiYgA7ZUQy36X8+QIQDddmk9mNYIn8cQ VQikTq9cQFrgdXsN2Fc/n7ApevMpG+g+CjfZw= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=qoCMYW9DOT3NnE1TNZHrL5KgZ1rgB8g7vtmtDR/Juc6qQAJYLb2LbwicY2fFAdxzDB TgeuZrHs1zy4iDLc95QBnyDQBQtA5lFDCs0JaANGViNJeNyxj8Fc0g66ZcHXSZB8QcU3 NqAbqHEWu5mtqV34uu78FAFROMTM7rRkPr7D4= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.181.218.14 with SMTP id v14mr1947969bkq.111.1234787573633; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:32:53 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: References: <4de8c3930902160230x66606aaaxb94469b52675addc@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:32:53 +0100 Message-ID: <4de8c3930902160432r494df64ftc404d7df21a5a50a@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban] Re: nominative-accusative & ergative-absolutive From: tijlan To: lojban-list@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 15318 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: pascal.akihiko@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list 2009/2/16 Adam Raizen : > So then does English also buffer the difference between the two, since it > also does not morphologically specify case? Though irregularly, it does specify for at least some of the pronouns. In "I saw him", the accusative case of "him" is morphologically specified (in contrast to "he"). So is "I". > I think Lojban is as > nominative-accusative as it gets. (Predicate logic was invented by people > who spoke and were familiar with nominative-accusative languages.) If the > correct Lojban for the first sentence were "klama lo nanmu" (not "klama *fa* > lo nanmu), then we could probably say that Lojban is ergative-absolutive. Syntactic ergativity is quite rare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative-absolutive_language). And I don't see why the x2 of "klama" being the agent/subject would be so indicative of an ergative-absolutive syntax. The Basque example already shows that the subject doesn't necessarily follows the verb in an ergative-absolutive language. I've learned that there are also nominative-accusative languages where the verb preceds the subject, such as formal Arabic, Gaelic, Hawaiian, and, to a lesser extent, Romanian, Hungarian and Finnish. mu'o mi'e tijlan To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.