en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative%E2%80%93absolutive_alignment
3 corrections found
the subjects in Latin are marked with the nominative case marker "-us" for both transitive and intransitive verbs. Similarly, the object is always marked with the accusative marker "-um".
This overgeneralizes from one noun class. Latin does not mark all subjects with -us or all objects with -um; Latin nouns belong to multiple declensions with different nominative and accusative endings.
Full reasoning
The sentence takes the endings of the example nouns domin-us and serv-us and presents them as if they were the general Latin subject/object markers. But Latin nouns have five declensions with different case endings.
For example, standard declension tables show:
- 1st declension nominative singular -a, accusative singular -am
- 2nd declension masculine nominative singular -us, accusative singular -um
- 3rd declension accusative singular often -em, with neuters having accusative identical to nominative
So -us and -um are not the universal Latin nominative and accusative markers; they are characteristic of some second-declension masculine examples. The article's claim is therefore factually incorrect as a statement about Latin in general.
2 sources
- Case Endings of the Five Declensions
1st Declension: NOM. -a ... ACC. -am ... 2nd Declension: NOM. -us ... ACC. -um ... 3rd Declension: ACC. -em (-im) (like Nom.).
- Lesson 7 - Third declension nouns and adjectives - Latin
You can identify third declension nouns by their genitive singular ending ‘-is’ ... Remember, nominative and accusative cases of neuter nouns are always the same.
Such languages are said to operate with S/O syntactic pivot.
Ergative alignment does not by itself mean a language has an S/O syntactic pivot. Many ergative languages are only morphologically ergative and have accusative syntax with an S/A pivot.
Full reasoning
This sentence incorrectly treats ergative alignment as if it automatically implied an S/O syntactic pivot. In linguistic typology, those are different levels of analysis.
A language can be morphologically ergative—for example, by marking A differently from S and O in case or agreement—without being syntactically ergative. Standard references explicitly note that many morphologically ergative languages are syntactically accusative and use an S/A pivot, not an S/O pivot.
So the blanket statement that ergative languages "are said to operate with S/O syntactic pivot" is wrong. At most, some ergative languages do; many do not.
2 sources
- Ergativity | Language | Cambridge Core
Many languages which have some morphological ergativity are entirely accusative (S/A pivot) at the syntactic level.
- Chapter 2 Ergativity
language with an ergative case system may choose the S/A pivot at the syntactic level.
Only transitive subjects have a case marking "-ŋgu".
Dyirbal transitive subjects are not marked only with -ŋgu. The ergative marker has several allomorphs in Dyirbal, including -ŋgu, -gu, -bu/-du/-ju, and -ru, depending on the noun stem.
Full reasoning
This sentence presents -ŋgu as if it were the sole transitive-subject marker in Dyirbal. That is too narrow and factually inaccurate.
Modern reference grammars describe Dyirbal ergative-instrumental marking as a set of allomorphs conditioned by the phonological shape of the nominal stem. In addition to -ŋgu, Dyirbal also uses forms such as -gu, homorganic stop + -u after nasals (-bu, -du, -ju), -ju after y, and -ru after liquids.
The examples in the article happen to use nouns that take -ŋgu, but the wording "Only transitive subjects have a case marking '-ŋgu'" wrongly implies that -ŋgu is the only ergative case form in the language.
2 sources
- A New Grammar of Dyirbal
Table 1.4 Case inflections on nominals: Ergative-instrumental is: -ŋgu after a disyllabic stem ending in a vowel; -gu after a longer stem ending in a vowel; a homorganic stop plus u after a nasal (-bu after m, -du after n, -ju after ñ); -ju after y; -ru after l, rr, or r.
- UC Berkeley thesis excerpt on Dyirbal ergative allomorphy
In Dyirbal, the ergative case is marked by -ŋgu or -gu, as shown ...