#ergativity

[lamegtu-larsa]

just conlanging things 😜

[rendakuenthusiast]

[sandybrett]

I've been bingeing the Conlangery podcast recently, and they linked to a really interesting-sounding article called "The Blue Bird of Ergativity." The link wouldn't load, but luckily I was able to find a PDF of the article elsewhere. Haven't read it yet, but I thought I would highlight it here.

[chrysothronos]

CAN'T CHOOSE WHO YOU LOVE, CAN YOU? GUESS YOU CAN ONLY CHOOSE HOW FAR DOWN THE ROAD YOU GO WITH 'EM Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens Justified, Season One, Episode Six, “The Collection”

[aeniith]

Someone in the comments was asking for sources on ergativity and antipassives.

Here are sources that concern both:

Polinsky, Maria. "Antipassive." The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity, edited by Jessica Coon, Diane Massam, and Lisa deMena Travis, Oxford University Press, 2017. Polinsky, Maria. "Antipassives in Crosslinguistic Perspective." Annual Review of Linguistics, vol. 6, 2020, pp. 173–193.

Janic, Katarzyna. "On the Reflexive-Antipassive Polysemy: Typological Convergence from Unrelated Languages." Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, vol. 37, no. 1, 2011, pp. 217–232.

Bittner, Maria, and Ken Hale. "Ergativity: Toward a Theory of a Heterogeneous Class." Linguistic Inquiry, vol. 27, no. 4, 1996, pp. 531–604.

Here are a few sources on just ergativity:

Deal, Amy Rose. (2015). "Ergativity." In Syntax - Theory and Analysis: An International Handbook, edited by Tibor Kiss and Artemis Alexiadou, 654–707. De Gruyter Mouton.

Coon, Jessica, Diane Massam, and Lisa deMena Travis, eds. (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity. Oxford University Press.

Dixon, R. M. W. (1979). "Ergativity." Language, 55(1), 59–138.

Aldridge, Edith. (2008). "Generative Approaches to Ergativity." Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(5), 966–995.

And some on antipassives in particular:

Sansom, Meagan. "Where Do Antipassive Constructions Come From?" Diachronica, vol. 34, no. 2, 2017, pp. 233–276.

Cooreman, Ann. "A Functional Typology of Antipassives." In Voice: Form and Function, edited by Barbara A. Fox and Paul J. Hopper, John Benjamins, 1994, pp. 49–88. Also, I want to draw attention to the work of my colleague from graduate school, Raina Heaten, whose dissertation is about the typology of antipassives: Heaton, R. L. (2017). A typology of antipassives, with special reference to Mayan (Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa). University of Hawai‘i ScholarSpace.

This translation involves the use of the antipassive. You probably know what a passive voice is. But have you heard of the antipassive?

A passive essentially takes an object of a clause and makes it a subject, for a variety of reasons, including moving the focus, eliminating the need to explicitly state what would be the subject of the active voice version of the clause. So “Namí ate the apricot” would become “The apricot was eaten (by Namí)”

The antipassive essentially does the opposite. It takes a transitive verbal phrase and makes the *object* either disappear or demotes it to an oblique role. So what is necessarily a transitive verb otherwise, like “scare”, becomes intransitive. So it’s a little like saying “Namí has been scaring”. Only in English, that’s not really a good clause, so I translate it as “Namí has been scaring people”. With this indeterminate word, “people”, it doesn’t really matter WHO Namí has been scaring, it’s anyone and everyone who goes down by the river, potentially. The point is Namí and the fact that she’s acting weird.

Languages that have an ergative-absolutive verbal alignment are particular likely to use antipassives. This is because, in this type of alignment, the agent of a transitive and the subject of an intransitive are treated differently (the latter is treated syntactically like the patient of a transitive). Thus, the agent (ergative) gets promoted to absolutive and thus the former patient is demoted and less emphasized. The opposite is true for passive voices—they tend to be common in nominative accusative languages.

Rílin actually uses a split ergative system! So it gets both. :P

[stuffyflowers]

🎉UTY ANNIVERSARY WEEK🎉

(Before anything I wanna say I fully understand if the interest in this event is now less than what was indicated in the poll due to recent events. Please take care of your mental health and don’t be afraid to take a break from the internet + don’t force yourself to participate just bc you said you would before.)

Undertale Yellow's full release is turning 1 year old this December! To celebrate, I'm running an UTY appreciation week of sorts :) Prompts will be listed below! You can use them however you'd like, as long as it relates to the game of course. You don't have to use both options for each day or even participate every day.

This will start on the 3rd of December and run until the 9th - the day of UTY's release! You can tag anything you post with #utyversary and I'll make sure to reblog it for archival purposes ^_^ have fun!

Day 1: Missing Poster / Favourite Character

Day 2: Best Friends / Favourite Side Character

Day 3: Honeydew / Favourite OST Track

Day 4: Slice of the Surface / Favourite Location

Day 5: One’s Past / Favourite Moment

Day 6: Justice will be Served / Favourite Boss Fight

Day 7: Legacy / Favourite Ending

[wellhellothereem]

quick drawing because I FINALLY PLAYED IN STARS AND TIME!!!! (only the demo BUT am planning to buy it hehehehoohoohaha)

For now my favourite characters are Odile and Bonnie!!!! (and also the star who I think is called Loop because of the design <33) (<< Also I love stars)(also funny I say that since I completely changed the design in my drawing SHBABAI just had to give them long sleeves..)

Also doodle:

[corioliseffect]

i hate how im always like "propaganda doesnt work on me" and then i see footage of oscar working out and im like damn... maybe i should work out (hates the gym)

[lingthusiasm]

Bonus 83: Themself, Basque ergativity cartoons, and bad swearing ideas - Deleted scenes from Kirby Conrod, Itxaso Rodriguez-Ordoñez, and Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

We've interviewed lots of great people on Lingthusiasm, and sometimes there's a story or two that we just don't have space for in the main episode, so here's a bonus episode with our favourite recent outtakes! Think of it as a special bonus edition DVD from the past year of Lingthusiasm with director's commentary and deleted scenes.

In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about some of our favourite deleted bits from recent interviews that we didn't quite have space to share with you. First, we go back to our online liveshow with fan-favourite guest Kirby Conrod, previously seen talking about singular they and other language and gender topics, about reflexive pronouns (themself vs themselves) and people who use multiple pronouns in fiction and real life. Then we go back to Itxaso Rodriguez-Ordoñez, previously talking about Basque language revival, about how Basque people feel about the famed ergativity (hint: there are cartoons!). Finally, we go back to authors Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, previously talking about swearing in science fiction, fantasy, and history, about bad swearing ideas in fiction and why acronymic etymologies should be viewed with deep suspicion. Listen to this episode of deleted scenes from recent interviews, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

[lamegtu-larsa]

Glossing of the 2nd verse of the 9 herbs charm:

Ek aga, sabak, sojuneth ug memdu

Kabarag agebeg, kuluk abmadu abodun

Aga gakabeth accegtu nem u’ gagtu

Ajetu ag’ akathlatareth nem ug bak sab

Aga tarsuth accegtu nem ug tabak sab

Gug aba eb sheshuk u ’kabtu nem a’barhemtun

Kam, aba u ‘kabtu nem abheneg

Akabtu ekmad, akabtu hebran rak aheth abheneg

Still getting used to doing ABS-ERG, and some phrases, like "plantain, herbs their-mother" are wierd cause the main player is plantain but it's being put in the absolutive bc it's "owned" by the herbs, even though she is superior to them...

Starting to get why some erg langs have animacy splits .

There is an alternate construction I could have done, sabak, mem eb sojun which is just "mother of herbs" and obviates the ERG-ABS issue, maybe I should go with that.

Or I could say "herbs, your children" sojuneth abccegradu, that is actually a better solution that keeps plantain in the ergative.

Chime in with thoughts if you are more ergative than me! 😛

[insomniac-arrest]

RIP to the hour we lost

you were innocent girl, we just don't know how to act 😔

[kithtaehyung]

AGUST D : HAEGEUM (奚琴) POSTER SET 2  ⤷ 23.04.21 1PM KST | ig ; twt (click for hi-res)

[nedermemes]

gelukkig nieuw jaar ik hoop dat iedereen die die bommen afsteekt z'n handen verliest

[bumbelbee]

*zingt erg vals*

*stille judgemental blikken*

[velaraffricate]

[chrysothronos]

I WENT NEXT DOOR TO THIRTY-ONE FLAVORS. Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens Justified, Season One, Episode Four, "Long in the Tooth"