I'll just go ahead and do this for all of those of us who aren't linguists.
Main Entry: er·ga·tive Pronunciation: '&r-g&-tiv Function: adjective Etymology: Greek ergatEs worker, from ergon work Date: 1939 : of, relating to, or being a language (as Inuit or Georgian) in which the objects of transitive verbs and subjects of intransitive verbs are typically marked by the same linguistic forms; also : being an inflectional morpheme that typically marks the subject of a transitive verb in an ergative language
Your dictionary is broken. :-) (1), "Inuit" isn't a language, and (b), Inuktitut (which I assume is what it means) isn't precisely ergative.
But otherwise, yes. Essentially, okay, some languages -- being English (although English has what's known in the trade as an "impoverished case-marking system") and most of the languages English-speakers tend to study, your Latins and Germans and whatnot -- are nominative-accusative, which means that the subject of an intransitive clause -- the "he" in he sleeps -- looks the same as the subject of a transitive clause -- the "he" in he drives the car (that'd be the nominative case), and this is different from the way the object of a transitive clause looks -- the "him" in we like him (accusative case).
So the other main way of ordering things is ergative-absolutive, in which the subject of an intransitive looks the same as the object of a transitive (absolutive), and the subject of a transitive is what's different (ergative).
But actually, even that's not so bad. It's a system, at least. Those languages behave. There's other languages that have different endings for all three (intransitive subject, transitive subject, and object), and others that change depending on if the subject is a first- or second-person pronoun or something else, and others (which is where Inuktitut comes in) that just can't freakin' make up their minds, but do different things depending on -- well, they can't be random, they have to depend on something, but I'm damned if I can tell what it is.
If anyone knows WTF is going on with ergativity in Inuktitut, I'm listening.
Some of the dictionaries I looked at said that Inuit is a family of languages, and that any of the languages in that family could also be called Inuit. I don't have an opinion either way, but that's their claim.
Hmm ... well, okay, being where "Inuit" is the Eskimo word for "Eskimo," and the language family is Eskimo-Aleut with sub-genera (surprise, surprise) Aleut and Eskimo, I guess you could technically call "Inuit" a family of languages. Technically.
and that any of the languages in that family could also be called Inuit
But that seems to me like saying any of the languages in the Celto-Italic family (including French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Romansh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Breton -- you get the idea) could also be called Latin.
On the other hand, I'm a student, not an expert. So what do I know. :-)
You realize that if you outlaw ergativity, you'll just drive it underground, and make it even harder to regulate. Better to keep it legal and above board, where you can be stringently prescriptive about it.
Ergativity can stay. It's the not-even-tripartite whatever-case-ending-strikes-our-fancy crowd that's pissing me off.
But I found whatshisname's paper (whatshisname = professor of cog sci at Stanford; did PhD at Stanford and was at CMU for a while in between; i forget his actual name), cleverly titled "Ergativity in Inuktitut," so once the midterm is over I'll have some entertaining light reading.
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no subject
Main Entry: er·ga·tive
Pronunciation: '&r-g&-tiv
Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek ergatEs worker, from ergon work
Date: 1939
: of, relating to, or being a language (as Inuit or Georgian) in which the objects of transitive verbs and subjects of intransitive verbs are typically marked by the same linguistic forms; also : being an inflectional morpheme that typically marks the subject of a transitive verb in an ergative language
no subject
But otherwise, yes. Essentially, okay, some languages -- being English (although English has what's known in the trade as an "impoverished case-marking system") and most of the languages English-speakers tend to study, your Latins and Germans and whatnot -- are nominative-accusative, which means that the subject of an intransitive clause -- the "he" in he sleeps -- looks the same as the subject of a transitive clause -- the "he" in he drives the car (that'd be the nominative case), and this is different from the way the object of a transitive clause looks -- the "him" in we like him (accusative case).
So the other main way of ordering things is ergative-absolutive, in which the subject of an intransitive looks the same as the object of a transitive (absolutive), and the subject of a transitive is what's different (ergative).
But actually, even that's not so bad. It's a system, at least. Those languages behave. There's other languages that have different endings for all three (intransitive subject, transitive subject, and object), and others that change depending on if the subject is a first- or second-person pronoun or something else, and others (which is where Inuktitut comes in) that just can't freakin' make up their minds, but do different things depending on -- well, they can't be random, they have to depend on something, but I'm damned if I can tell what it is.
If anyone knows WTF is going on with ergativity in Inuktitut, I'm listening.
no subject
Some of the dictionaries I looked at said that Inuit is a family of languages, and that any of the languages in that family could also be called Inuit. I don't have an opinion either way, but that's their claim.
no subject
Hmm ... well, okay, being where "Inuit" is the Eskimo word for "Eskimo," and the language family is Eskimo-Aleut with sub-genera (surprise, surprise) Aleut and Eskimo, I guess you could technically call "Inuit" a family of languages. Technically.
and that any of the languages in that family could also be called Inuit
But that seems to me like saying any of the languages in the Celto-Italic family (including French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Romansh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Breton -- you get the idea) could also be called Latin.
On the other hand, I'm a student, not an expert. So what do I know. :-)
no subject
no subject
[g]
Ergativity can stay. It's the not-even-tripartite whatever-case-ending-strikes-our-fancy crowd that's pissing me off.
But I found whatshisname's paper (whatshisname = professor of cog sci at Stanford; did PhD at Stanford and was at CMU for a while in between; i forget his actual name), cleverly titled "Ergativity in Inuktitut," so once the midterm is over I'll have some entertaining light reading.