Talk:Tripartite language

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If all languages of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family are tripartite, it does not make sense to say that tripartite languages are "rare" as this is a pretty populous language subfamily. But I'm not sure it is actually true that all those languages are tripartite. --Jim Henry | Talk 21:10, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's true either, but even if it is, there are several thousand more non-Indo-Aryan languages than there are Indo-Aryan ones... In the grand scale of things, its still pretty darn rare. --Krsont 22:16, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

It's plain wrong, so I changed it. Together with Georgian, the Indo-Aryan languages are the most famous examples of split-ergative languages: they use the nominative in the present and the ergative in the past, and lack an intransitive case. David Marjanović 16:40, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hungarian

Could Hungarian be considered tripartite? True, in the pronominal system, there is only nominative-accusative, but when you look at the verbal system, there is a partial distinction between absolutive and ergative subjects (e.g., látok ‘I see’ vs. látom ‘I see (it)’ vs. megyek ‘I go/am going’ - the ek/ok distinction is part of vowel harmony and doesn't matter here). It breaks down in that there is no ergative marking for subjects with “indefinite” third person or with first or second person objects, but the Hungarian verbal complex sure looks a lot like an ergative-absolutive system from some angles and a lot like a nominative-accusative one from others. I wrote an article about this about ten years ago, but haven't really followed up on it since.

-Fenevad 18:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Does látok mean "I look" (no object) rather than "I see" (implied transitive object that can be dropped outside of Chinese)? If so, you have a point. If not, I just don't understand it… :-) David Marjanović 16:42, 9 July 2007 (UTC)