From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Feb 16 04:52:52 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:52:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LZ2xw-0002yh-FY for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:52:52 -0800 Received: from mail-ew0-f15.google.com ([209.85.219.15]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LZ2xn-0002xF-G9 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:52:51 -0800 Received: by ewy8 with SMTP id 8so1904890ewy.10 for ; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:52:32 -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; bh=ZVasqmwUu4w58wimUgkOga3fhnwJUmgXbp0XrfvDMlw=; b=IvPriF+AVk4UP5ziiUGkLPPtAy9RnEbzl1qekAje6lD1iqsLx6R5WqyAeh3+wRzbBA DzwmfKLfnhi713B3JFVdg5VxAPnxkF2iGrF9SlYodqvd0KByAP2HZTDltu5Cck9VfvbI gsydeLTikEw2kWPPXJuRGCuV38smJELrou0fg= 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; b=VFstX0u9WD3IeDR4+ZLK5ZBgn5AxO7wdlAFek1DthLFnNRhryyj695tPYFLwjF7wUm ayAnvHAjQNdM7xT79xebLMK6SHJM4K/gB3ceySZ+bt2NYkQHwHqV6WbnAYuAb6BtVXnk I45nW41eAFJKhAdzHC+IDslhwfkCEeDeSBEz8= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.210.119.5 with SMTP id r5mr4357527ebc.64.1234788752157; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:52:32 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <4de8c3930902160432r494df64ftc404d7df21a5a50a@mail.gmail.com> References: <4de8c3930902160230x66606aaaxb94469b52675addc@mail.gmail.com> <4de8c3930902160432r494df64ftc404d7df21a5a50a@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:52:32 +0200 Message-ID: Subject: [lojban] Re: nominative-accusative & ergative-absolutive From: Adam Raizen To: lojban-list@lojban.org Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=000e0cd1fab6f1eb1e046308a8cb X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 15319 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: adam.raizen@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list --000e0cd1fab6f1eb1e046308a8cb Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 2:32 PM, tijlan wrote: > > 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). There's no morphological inflection in Lojban, so whatever morphosyntactic alignment it has has to be syntactic and not morpho-. > And I > don't see why the x2 of "klama" being the agent/subject would be so > indicative of an ergative-absolutive syntax. Because then the argument of an intransitive verb is treated the same as the object of a transitive verb (treating 'klama' as intransitive, which may be arguable). > 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. Of course. VSO languages are not rare, and most of them are accusative, not ergative. (You can add Biblical Hebrew to the list.) The question isn't the order of the sentence constituents, but how the argument of an intransitive verb is treated compared to the subject and object of a transitive verb. -- Adam Raizen Got sente? --000e0cd1fab6f1eb1e046308a8cb Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 2:32 PM= , tijlan <= pascal.akihiko@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Lojban is as
> nominative-accusative as it gets. (Predicate logic was invented by peo= ple
> 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-absoluti= ve.

Syntactic ergativity is quite rare
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative-absolutive_language= ).

There's no morphological inflection= in Lojban, so whatever morphosyntactic alignment it has has to be syntacti= c and not morpho-.
 
And I
don't see why the x2 of "klama" being the agent/subject would= be so
indicative of an ergative-absolutive syntax.

Because then the argument of an intransitive verb is treated the same as= the object of a transitive verb (treating 'klama' as intransitive,= which may be arguable).
 
The Basque example
already shows that the subject doesn't necessarily follows the verb in<= br> 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.

Of course.= VSO languages are not rare, and most of them are accusative, not ergative.= (You can add Biblical Hebrew to the list.) The question isn't the orde= r of the sentence constituents, but how the argument of an intransitive ver= b is treated compared to the subject and object of a transitive verb.

--
Adam Raizen <adam.raizen@gmail.com>
Got sente?
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