Bob Offer-Westort’s Reviews > Ergativity > Status Update

I can't quite articulate, yet, how much fun this is.

The first of these sections feels very scattered. The second is dull, but mercifully brief: Keenan's description of the characteristics of 'subject' simply aren't on the level of Dixon's analysis. Having reviewed these two sections, I'm excited to get into the third.

I'm back on page 130 because I decided to do some re-reading. Cap. 5 deals with the potential universality of subject-related grammatical phenomena, even in more ergative languages. The chapter breaks this into three sections: a definition of 'subject', a comparison with E.L. Keenan's 1976 description of 'subject' cross-linguistically, & a look at grammatical phenomena that suggest the universality of the 'subject'.

I read Dixon's 1979 essay 'Ergativity' (from *Language*) last week as a starting point for getting back into Sumerian grammar. Knowing that a particular language is ergative is one thing; understanding how ergative languages on the whole work is quite another. Dixon 1979 was eye-opening. At this point, nothing is new in the book, but the explanation is clear, accessible, & thoughtfully analytic.