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ERGATIVITY - I’m having trouble with it | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| RBenham Triglot Groupie IndonesiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5642 days ago 60 posts - 62 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Indonesian | Message 25 of 28 24 June 2009 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, I am glad charlmartell won't be reading this.
Anyway, for the benefit of any readers who might actually have brain-cells in the double digits or more, I should perhaps point out that the sentence quoted was (quite obviously) not intended as an example of an ergative construction, but rather as evidence of some similarity of the grammatical rôle of the subject of arrive and the object of purchase.... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6893 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 28 30 June 2009 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
In that case it should be possible to tell what the specific unexpressed object is, in the phrase "Thou shalt not kill". Edited by Hencke on 30 June 2009 at 9:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| RBenham Triglot Groupie IndonesiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5642 days ago 60 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Indonesian | Message 27 of 28 02 July 2009 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am not sure why you need to be able to tell what the object is, although it should be clear in actual use: Thou shalt not kill [anybody]. Declarer played out the Ace, and when the King fell, he laid down [his cards]. Etc. What is important is that it is always implied that there is an object. Killing is not something you can ever do without something or someone's being killed.... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6893 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 28 02 July 2009 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
To my way of thinking that is a chain of deductions based on knowledge about the real-world concept that the verb "kill" represents. However from the grammar point of view the real-world concept does not necessarily matter. Grammar is not concerned with reality directly, only with the mechanics of how words are put together to describe reality. An activity takes place, no object is anywhere in sight as a possible "receiver" of the action. The mechanics of the grammar is put together in the same way as any other intransitive case. I managed to dig up a couple of references: Interestingly it turns out there is some special terminology already in use for these cases, such as in this thread on the subject of the verb "discuss":
I am not so sure if it actually serves any purpose to have separate terminology for these "absolute" cases. Why such a desperate need to classify each verb as either "transitive" or "intransitive", and have it stay put in its own little box forever, when in actual fact, it is more helpful to look at how it is used in each case. And this page talks directly of transitive and intransitive usage of the same verb, though judging by the style it's more of a quick-guide type of page and not necessarily authoritative:
Another page here. Edited by Hencke on 03 July 2009 at 1:48am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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