Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

earing the locative-terminative is the causee, a morphosyntactic environment that is
much more reminiscent of both Garrett’s Type C ergativity and Zólyomi’s reconstruction
of the history of four-participant verbs (Zólyomi 1999, 244-251) than the Type A process
that Coghill and Deutscher propose. There are no attestations of the locative-terminative
postposition marking a demoted agent anywhere else in the language (leaving open, for
the moment, the interpretation of the mes.an.ne 2.pa 3.da construction below) and the most
common uses of the locative-terminative postposition are (a) as the indicator of a goal in
certain morphosyntactic environments and (b) as marker of demoted patient in certain
compound verb constructions. In Michalowski’s recent study of “Enmebaragesi”
(Michalowski 2003), he identifies a construction that can be exemplified in contrast with
the mes.an.ne 2.pa 3.da construction as follows (both examples are personal names).
(73) ME.bara 2.ge 4.e.si
ißib-Ø barag-e si-Ø
priest-Nom/Abs dias-LocTerm fill-ActivePrt
“the priest who fills the dias”
(74) mes.an.ne 2.pa 3.da
mes an-e pad-a
youth An-LocTerm call-PerfPrt
“the youth called by An”
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