Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Posted: 17 Jul 2017 20:40
Tripartite's pretty rare. I don't know for certain if it's the rarest, though.
Discuss constructed languages, cultures, worlds, related sciences and much more!
https://cbbforum.com/
This question has the false premise of assuming there to be a finite number of alignments. Basically all languages are either purely nom/acc or show some kind of split system (bear in mind however that many languages we consider to be purely accusative are actually split systems between accusative and direct/nonmarking. For example all western IE languages I’m aware of do not distinguish nominative and accusative in the neuters. Syntactically these languages will be accusative though). I’m not aware of a language that is strictly ergative at all (even some of the most ergative languages of Australia, featuring even deeply ingrained syntactic ergativity, have splits in the morphology).Parlox wrote:What alignment is rarest in natlangs?
Yes, thank you! I couldn't figure out how to articulate this.Adarain wrote:This question has the false premise of assuming there to be a finite number of alignments.Parlox wrote:What alignment is rarest in natlangs?
I'm assuming, as shimobaatar assumes, that you mean "morphosyntactic alignment of intranstive Subjects with transitive Agents and/or transitive Patients".Parlox wrote:What alignment is rarest in natlangs?
According to http://wals.info/feature/98A#2/25.5/148.9, if we're talking about case-marking of full noun-phrases, the rarest are Tripartite and Active/Stative (Split-S or Split-Intransitive), at about 2% each.shimobaatar wrote:Tripartite's pretty rare. I don't know for certain if it's the rarest, though.
What is this? I assume subject and object of a transitive verb both in the same case and the subject of an intransitive verb in another?Adarain wrote:Finally, transitive alignment is just actually dumb, and we only know of it in one corner of one language (Rushan, restricted to I think past tense or sth like that), and it seems to have arisen recently and is already fading out of use again.Parlox wrote:What alignment is rarest in natlangs?
Which (if any) languages possessing masculine, feminine, and neuter genders also morphologically distinguish--usually or always--accusative from nominative?Adarain wrote:For example all western IE languages I’m aware of do not distinguish nominative and accusative in the neuters.
Apparently not, at least definitely no Indo-European language.Trebor wrote:Which (if any) languages possessing masculine, feminine, and neuter genders also morphologically distinguish--usually or always--accusative from nominative?Adarain wrote:For example all western IE languages I’m aware of do not distinguish nominative and accusative in the neuters.
As far as I know, that's exactly right.Iyionaku wrote:What is this? I assume subject and object of a transitive verb both in the same case and the subject of an intransitive verb in another?Adarain wrote:Finally, transitive alignment is just actually dumb, and we only know of it in one corner of one language (Rushan, restricted to I think past tense or sth like that), and it seems to have arisen recently and is already fading out of use again.Parlox wrote:What alignment is rarest in natlangs?
Germanic languages. Except in the neuter, as said. Slavic languages, same story (based on information I just got from wikipedia). Romance, Baltic and Celtic seem to have collapsed the gender system into two (I know that this is not stricly true of Romance at least, some remnants of the neuter remain, but Romance languages also don’t distinguish a whole lot of cases anymore so it’s moot), anything further east I know absolutely nothing about, but I did check and Sanskrit retains the three-gender system and does not distinguish nom/acc in neuter but does everywhere else.Trebor wrote:Which (if any) languages possessing masculine, feminine, and neuter genders also morphologically distinguish--usually or always--accusative from nominative?Adarain wrote:For example all western IE languages I’m aware of do not distinguish nominative and accusative in the neuters.
Hooops, I got the question completely wrong. I thought the question was "Are there any languages wherein nom-acc is distinguished in neuter gender?" This is indeed, as Adarain has confirmed, apparently not existent.Adarain wrote:Germanic languages. Except in the neuter, as said. Slavic languages, same story (based on information I just got from wikipedia). Romance, Baltic and Celtic seem to have collapsed the gender system into two (I know that this is not stricly true of Romance at least, some remnants of the neuter remain, but Romance languages also don’t distinguish a whole lot of cases anymore so it’s moot), anything further east I know absolutely nothing about, but I did check and Sanskrit retains the three-gender system and does not distinguish nom/acc in neuter but does everywhere else.Trebor wrote:Which (if any) languages possessing masculine, feminine, and neuter genders also morphologically distinguish--usually or always--accusative from nominative?Adarain wrote:For example all western IE languages I’m aware of do not distinguish nominative and accusative in the neuters.
I wouldn’t say it’s nonexistant. I know absolutely nothing about the Indo part of Indo-European. It would not surprise me if there was at least one language in which analogy kicked in and neuter took on a distinction between nom and acc. I am just not aware of any. Iirc in anatolian neuters took on ergative alignment instead.Iyionaku wrote:Hooops, I got the question completely wrong. I thought the question was "Are there any languages wherein nom-acc is distinguished in neuter gender?" This is indeed, as Adarain has confirmed, apparently not existent.Adarain wrote:Germanic languages. Except in the neuter, as said. Slavic languages, same story (based on information I just got from wikipedia). Romance, Baltic and Celtic seem to have collapsed the gender system into two (I know that this is not stricly true of Romance at least, some remnants of the neuter remain, but Romance languages also don’t distinguish a whole lot of cases anymore so it’s moot), anything further east I know absolutely nothing about, but I did check and Sanskrit retains the three-gender system and does not distinguish nom/acc in neuter but does everywhere else.Trebor wrote:Which (if any) languages possessing masculine, feminine, and neuter genders also morphologically distinguish--usually or always--accusative from nominative?Adarain wrote:For example all western IE languages I’m aware of do not distinguish nominative and accusative in the neuters.
Similar divisions do exist in other corners of the world for sure. Division into masculine/feminine is very common, so is division into animate/inanimate; the classical IE system is simply what you get when you overlay those. If we take neuter=inanimate then it becomes quite easy to find more examples of course. From all I can tell, Tamil distinguishes nominative (unmarked) and accusative (marked with a suffix) equally in all nouns, and distinguishes the classes masc.sg, fem.sg, human.pl, nonhuman.sg, nonhuman.plKaiTheHomoSapien wrote:I'd be curious to know the answer to that question too. Outside of IE, I mean. No IE languages distinguish nom/acc in the neuter that I know of (Adarain is right about Hittite, where neuters take on ergative alignment--not sure about the other Anatolian languages). But what about outside of IE? Is the masculine/feminine/neuter division largely limited to IE languages to begin with?