Detail #246: A Subtle Spot for Sneaking Ergative Alignment In

Let's consider nouns with verbal complements, i.e.

a bit to eat
some way to go

Now, let's imagine that the language has intransitive subjects and objects of the embedded verb marked the same way:

a bit to eat
a man to sing

whether these mean 'singing man/eaten bit' or 'a man with the potential of singing' etc is neither here nor there - heck, these need not even really be part of the noun phrase, they could be part of a structure such as:

we need a man to sing
we need a bit to eat

even with a verb where 'to sing|eat' more clearly is an argument of the main verb rather than a part of the noun phrase than in this case. However, let's construct the transitive subject (even with implicit object) differently:

we need a man so he can hunt?
we need a man that hunts?
we need a man for his hunting?
we need a man he to hunt?

This would be a rather restricted place for ergativity to pop up, but it seems fairly realistic to me at least.