Saturday, June 26, 2004 :::
Basque and certain Caucasian languages have what they call an "ergative" noun case; it is used for the object of a transitive verb, or the subject of an intransitive verb. I'm not sure, though, that this is terribly meaningful; the full definition of a verb is really going to have to specify the relation between its subject and, assuming it's transitive, its object, so I don't see why the "ergative" isn't more or less a subject case, and their "subject" case more or less an object case.To be sure, the subject in most languages for most verbs tends to be the one that is more active; the object is being acted upon. We even have active and passive voices to enshrine this fact in our metalanguage. Still, consider the Swedish verb "heter". (That's the present tense indicative conjugation; Swedish doesn't conjugate by person or number.) It means, essentially, "to be called/named". The subject of the verb is called the object of the verb; "they call me knuckes" could become "jag heter knuckles", dropping the "they" that is introduced largely to comply with the demand that the verb contain a subject. That "heter" relates differently to the nouns with which it finds itself affiliated than does any similar verb in English caused no end of confusion in my Swedish class.
Perhaps a better example, though, is "gustar", from Spanish, which is translated "to please", but is not used in the way that verb is used in everyday American English. Gustar means to like, sort of, if you swap around the subject and the object. So if A finds B pleasing, who is active, the one pleasing or the one being pleased? The customary English expression supposes that liking someone is an activity one undertakes; the Spanish expression seems to suggest that being liked is something one does. Perhaps gustar is a Basque word, and the person being pleased is the ergative....
::: posted by dWj at 4:46 PM
