Мы с Андреем

[pne]

In English or German, when talking about two people doing something together (one of them being myself), I'd say something along the lines of John and I went to the beach / Karl und ich waren gestern in München—that is, with "I" in the singular.

However, I learned that Russian uses, instead, a construction of the form Мы с Андреем: literally, "we with Andrew" rather than "Andrew and I".

So I was interested to read that Niuean apparently also uses this form; an example sentence in Seiter's Studies in Niuean Syntax reads:

Kini	e	maua	mo	Maka	e	māla
clear	Erg	we,Du,Ex	with	Maka	Abs	plantation
'Maka and I are clearing the plantation'

"We(two) with Maka" for "Maka and I" looks like the same construction as Russian uses. Nifty!

Comments

Ergative and absolutive articles

[pne.livejournal.com]

By the way, the ergative marker seems to be identical to the absolutive marker. Am I right?

No; the example is misleading in this respect.

There are two sets of articles: one for common nouns and one for proper nouns and pronouns.

Common noun articles are he for ergative and e for absolutive; proper noun/pronoun articles are e for ergative and a for absolutive.

It appears that in Niuean, there are a number of particles which are homophonous but have different functions; besides marking absolutive for common nouns and ergative for pronouns, for example, e is also used in noun phrases after numbers (ue e kulī, "two dogs") and after some other particles. A is also used when preposing possessive phrases (ko e fale ha mautolu "our house, a house of ours" --> ko (e) ha mautolu a fale "our house").

He, in particular, seems to mean all sorts of things, which makes understanding Niuean sentences a bit confusing for me sometimes. Ai can also be pretty bad.

Re: Ergative and absolutive articles

[pne.livejournal.com]

As for "e" dividing verb from subject and subject from object, compare:

Kua kai e taua e tau uga
PERF eat ERG we.two ABS PL crab
We two have eaten crabs

with

Kua kai he tau uga a taua
PERF eat ERG PL crab ABS we.two
Crabs have eaten us two