From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Feb 16 06:34:29 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:34:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LZ4YH-0002dt-Hs for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:34:29 -0800 Received: from cdptpa-omtalb.mail.rr.com ([75.180.132.121]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LZ4YD-0002dD-SF for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:34:29 -0800 Received: from chausie ([71.75.215.96]) by cdptpa-omta05.mail.rr.com with ESMTP id <20090216143419.HPJ27443.cdptpa-omta05.mail.rr.com@chausie> for ; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:34:19 +0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chausie (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61291408B for ; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:34:18 -0500 (EST) From: Pierre Abbat To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: nominative-accusative & ergative-absolutive Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:34:13 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 (enterprise 0.20070907.709405) References: <4de8c3930902160230x66606aaaxb94469b52675addc@mail.gmail.com> <4de8c3930902160552o4fb16ad9pc70ae12ebc25b153@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4de8c3930902160552o4fb16ad9pc70ae12ebc25b153@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200902160934.15048.phma@phma.optus.nu> X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 15322 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: phma@phma.optus.nu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Monday 16 February 2009 08:52:23 tijlan wrote: > 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. I say either Lojban doesn't have a morphosyntactic alignment, or it has one that no natlang has. If I were explaining morphosyntactic alignment in Lojban terms, I'd say that the subject of a transitive verb in an accusative language is x1, whereas in an ergative language it's x2. I'm not sure how I'd explain split ergativity. The one instance in which I know how it arose, which is modern Indic, the past tense was originally a participle, used as a passive with the instrumental. Pierre 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.