A study in the analysis of Hindi sentence-structure

Abstract In a suggestive article Hans Vogt has discussed a type of Georgian sentence-structure which we may refer to as the “Aorist-Ergative construction” 1 . Attention had earlier been directed to this feature by Schuchardt, who pointed out a parallel in Basque. The peculiarities of the construction may conveniently be summarized by reference to Vogt's examples. In Georgian the sentence ‘the man kills the ox’ may be translated by kac-i h-klav-s xar-s, where the words for ‘man’ and ‘ox’ are, according to traditional grammatical analysis, in the Nominative and Accusative cases respectively; if, however, the Present verbal form is replaced by the Aorist, we have kac-ma (mo)-kl-a xar-i, where the word for ‘ox’ is in the Nominative and ‘man’ in a case for which Latin grammar provides no term, but which it is customary to call “Ergative”. In other words (again using traditional terminology) the “logical” (or “psychological”) object has become the grammatical subject — a state of affairs which is explained only...