From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Feb 16 05:52:35 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:52:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LZ3tj-0007v7-Nm for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:52:35 -0800 Received: from mail-bw0-f205.google.com ([209.85.218.205]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LZ3te-0007uE-Tx for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:52:35 -0800 Received: by bwz1 with SMTP id 1so3235065bwz.10 for ; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:52:23 -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=tcrZuPXsPcJFqB4nDena0r/kwB41fFnFCWIS1OOzcZA=; b=Z+qrrEzXLWzPGaUoStSlAgKjmZYgux55OQ37Rxn/ZABNACdrhXA/kHOPRcNwHVBksI vNUUoIgtmV7LGrd1gHnVycBNZ8jHmrDbEUGN3YuU6QpD4ZQEldVv53xiRM44SAn7Kcl8 k8yRTEsRjlMJopNFbFfFNLS3G4HPwEapC3bOw= 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=E0OXYxxPOl6o/TRSRvAMFv+fEyaJSXbNql7uem36NAIXZ1XICfAtwnsTfzd3pw0EzS /2pq4eYa9qPPpyqN7tBkNueseWj25x+5Jdrv9Y5eVd49o6zDofZA5M++3LyPwBL4+Tq+ luUCU1/nSE7BR9wisZtKizcBTiKdd3jfTHEdE= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.181.55.2 with SMTP id h2mr1974247bkk.52.1234792343881; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:52:23 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: References: <4de8c3930902160230x66606aaaxb94469b52675addc@mail.gmail.com> <4de8c3930902160432r494df64ftc404d7df21a5a50a@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:52:23 +0100 Message-ID: <4de8c3930902160552o4fb16ad9pc70ae12ebc25b153@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: 15320 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 : > There's no morphological inflection in Lojban, so whatever morphosyntactic > alignment it has has to be syntactic and not morpho-. Right, I'm not saying that Lojban is morphologically ergative-absolutive, but that it conveniently neutralizes the differing nominative and ergative perspectives. >> 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). However, the object of a transitive verb in an ergative-absolutive language is not agentive, is it? In "Gizonak mutila ikusi du", "mutila" is the object and has the same absolutive suffix as what "gizon-" as the argument/subject of an intransitive verb would take, but it is not agentive; it's not the boy who is seeing himself. Now if a hypothetical place structure of "viska" is such that the x2 is the agent of "seeing", it remains as the subject, not the object, despite the conversion. Likewise, the hypothetical word order in "klama lo nanmu" simply means that "lo nanmu" is the agentive subject of "klama", which could still be used to correspondently translate sentences of either ergative-absolutive ("Etorri da | gizonak.") or nominative-accusative ("Ekalvenis | viro."). The point is that, in Lojban, speakers of either type can talk without unlearning their native perspective of the linguistic alignment, apart from the word order. 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.