Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The ergative-absolutive alignment is in contrast to nominative–accusative alignment, which is observed in English and most other Indo-European languages, where the single argument of an intransitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She walks") behaves grammatically like the agent of a transitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She finds it") but ...
Ergative–absolutive languages can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the O and promoting the A to an S, thus taking the absolutive case, called the antipassive voice. About a sixth of the world's languages have ergative alignment. The best known are probably the Inuit languages and Basque.
In general linguistics, a labile verb (or ergative verb) is a verb that undergoes causative alternation; that is, it can be used both transitively and intransitively, with the requirement that the direct object of its transitive use corresponds to the subject of its intransitive use, [1] as in "I ring the bell" and "The bell rings."
The final ke 4 𒆤 is the composite of -k (genitive case) and -e (ergative case). [ 1 ] In grammar , the ergative case ( abbreviated erg ) is the grammatical case that identifies a nominal phrase [ 2 ] as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages .
Active–stative (or simply active): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb can be in one of two cases; if the argument is an agent, as in "He ate", then it is in the same case as the agent (subject) of a transitive verb (sometimes called the agentive case), and if it is a patient, as in "He tripped", then it is in the same case as the ...
Also, a different form (the ergative) would be used for "Jane" in the first sentence. For example, in the following Inuktitut sentences, the subject 'the woman' is in ergative case (arnaup) when occurring with a transitive verb, while the object 'the apple' (aapu) is in absolutive case.
This is in contrast with nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive alignment languages, in which the argument of an intransitive verb patterns with either the agent argument of the transitive (in accusative languages) or with the patient argument of the transitive (in ergative languages). Thus, whereas in English, "she" in "she runs ...
The term ergative is used in grammar in three different meanings: Ergative case , the grammatical case of the subject of a transitive verb in an ergative-absolutive language Ergative–absolutive language , a language in which the subject of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb