Talk:Morphosyntactic alignment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I rewrote this page in an attempt to clarify the concept. However, after re-reading it I suspect that the new page is more confusing than the old one, perhaps even flatly wrong. (Specifically, my use of the words "subject" and "object" may be incorrect.) Would please some expert have a look, and fix or revert the page if necessary? Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience...
Jorge Stolfi 03:54, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
- I've just reverted it. In fact there were a few errors, but the main thing is that most of the new content could be found in the linked pages. I'm taking some time soon to write a new version, since the original one is a bit too terse and starts out flatly technical. Of course, many non-technical readers could not be bothered to learn about "morphosyntactic alignment" in the first place. The page needs examples, so the concept can be grasped more easily. Morphosyntactic alignment is not exactly an issue of subjects and objects, but of syntactic pivots -- i. e. which argument of the verb is the most basic, which can be left out and assumed to remain the same in propositions such as "he saw the deer and ran". Since English has accusative alignment, the implicit subject of "ran" is "he" and not "the deer". --- Pablo-flores 01:37, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
Well, I have tried to restore my introduction while keeping the old contents of the page. I agree that the page still needs examples. Also, the pages ergative-absolutive language and nominative-accusative language are fairly short, so perhaps they could be merged into this one, and turned into redirects.
But now I have a problem, I do not understand the difference is any more. To distinguish EA languages from NA languages, one must be able to distinguish the two roles A and P in a way that does not depend on noun inflection (otherwise the definition is circular). Then NA languages are those that mark A same as S, and EA languages are those that do the opposite; right?
But, one cannot use the semantical agent/patient idea to distinguish A from P, because of problematic examples like "to receive", "to suffer", "to wait", "to tolerate", etc.. One cannot say that A is the argument with which the verb agrees, because in some languages the verb is invariant, and in others it must agree with both arguments. Finally one cannot say that A is the sentence pivot because then EA and NA become identical...
So what is the way out? Could it be that "morphosyntactic alignment" is just a complicated way of saying in some languages, the arguments of some verbs are exchanged with respect to their closest English equivalents -- e..g as in Spanish "me gusta el libro" versus Portuguese "eu gosto do livro"? Help...
Jorge Stolfi 19:39, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
- Sorry about the delay, I've had my comp in repairs for ten days already... The difference btw Erg-Abs and Nom-Acc is how they group S, A and P. This grouping is done by some means, either morphology or syntax (or both). I agree that, once you abstract S, A and P without assigning them semantic properties, then EA and NA are quite interchangeable, in the sense that for each one there are two arguments grouped and one left alone, and the names S, A and P really don't mean much.
- One cannot always say that A is the argument with which the verb agrees, as you say, but if the verb is invariant it's quite common to have a fixed word order, and in those cases 95% of languages place A (=the subject) first, and P (=the object) second (SOV, SVO, or VSO). A is also the most agent-like argument for most verbs. More importantly, Erg-Abs and Nom-Acc are not interchangeable because of the fact that many EA languages have mixed alignment (erg-abs case marking but nom-acc syntax), so they're not symmetric.
- Verb forms like "a mí me gusta el libro" vs. "I like the book" are examples of a common pattern that doesn't interfere with the main tendency of the language in question. Topics in the dative case occupying the subject slot are known in Russian, Latin and many other langs; they don't have to do with MS alignment but with pragmatics.
Contents |
[edit] The Milewski's typology
I have added information on extremally interesting (but little known) typology created by a Polish linguist in 1960s.
--Grzegorj 18:19, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I cleaned up Grzegorj's English and attempted to clarify the examples and table he provided. I think it's o.k. the way it is now, but frankly i don't know the first thing about the subject, instead working off of my own editorial experience and guesswork. I suggest someone look it over and take another crack.
[edit] Suggest removing Milewski's typology
This is a highly obscure and out-of-date take on the subject which is out of place in this article: if Milewski is to be treated in this much depth then there are at least half a dozen other scholars (especially Dixon, Du Bois come to mind) who should be treated in equal depth. A particular problem is that Milewski's use of terminology does not comply with that used in the rest of the article or the field as a whole. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.33.156.75 (talk) 16:31, 21 January 2007 (UTC).
Well, I've made the deletion: if someone wants to reinstate it I suggest it goes into a separate article.
[edit] Transitive case?
Is there such a thing (or is it just another way of saying the 'accusative case')? Link is needed regardless. - IstvanWolf 14:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
- Not sure in warrants its own article, though it wouldn't hurt. Rushani has one case for intransitive verbs, and a second for transitive verbs for both agent and patient - rather like a combined ergative + accusative. kwami 02:41, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Cleaned up
The article was getting grammatical role (S, A and P) horrifically mixed up with semantic role (agent and patient). I have tried to clean this up by removing as much semantic role terminology as I could. A =/= agent, P =/= patient! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.33.156.75 (talk) 16:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC).
[edit] Cleaned up
I cleaned up the artcle a bit and deleted some interesting but irrelevant information under nominative-accusative (the same can be said about languages with ergative alignment, but has nothing to do with ergativity or accusativity itself):
-
- In some languages, there is more than one case for a single category; for example, Baltic-Finnic languages use both the accusative case and the partitive case to mark the O, in different distributions. Languages without case marking can identify the arguments through word order; for example, in Subject Verb Object languages the A argument precedes the verb while the O argument follows. Caseless languages may alternatively identify verbal arguments by coreferential agreement markers on the verb, or by incorporated pronouns.
Moreover, I would suggest to avoid such obsolete terms as nominative-accusative languages or ergative-absolutive languages, as there are hardly any purely ergative languages and a lot of languages with dominantly nominative-accusative alignment have traces of ergativity. In the same mode I would suggest to rename articles on Nominative-accusative language, etc. into articles Nominative-accusative alignment.
Finally, I would replace the Japanese example with an example from some other language, because as far as I know the wa marker in Japanese has also been analyzed as topic marker and not as case. --User:Newydd 13:19, 22 Jan 2006 (UTC)
