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Ergative-absolutive language
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{{Linguistic_typology_topics}}
An '''ergative-absolutive'''
language (or simply '''ergative''') is one that treats the
subject (grammar) subject of
transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of
intransitive verbs and the
Object (grammar) object of transitive verbs.
Ergative vs. accusative languages
The distinguishing feature of an ergative language is that it maintains an equivalence between the object of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb, while treating the subject of a transitive verb differently. This contrasts with ''nominative-accusative'' languages (such as English), where the subject of transitive and intransitive verbs are treated like each other but distinctly from the object of a transitive verb.
These different arguments can be symbolized as follows:
* '''O''' = object of transitive verb
(also symbolized as '''P''' for patient)
* '''S
intrans''' = subject of intransitive verb
(also symbolized as '''S''' for subject)
* '''S
trans''' = subject of transitive verb
(also symbolized as '''A''' for Agent (grammar) agent)
The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following:
{| class="wikitable" cellpadding="5"
|
! Ergative-absolutive
! Nominative-accusative
|-
| '''O'''
|
same
|
different
|-
| '''S
intrans'''
|
same
|
same
|-
| '''S
trans'''
|
different
|
same
|}
''See
morphosyntactic alignment for a more technical explanation and a comparison with
nominative-accusative languages.''
Realization of ergativity
Ergativity can be found in both in
morphology (linguistics) morphology and
syntactic behavior.
Morphological ergativity
If the language has morphological
grammatical case case, then the
verb arguments are marked thus:
*The subject of a transitive verb ('''S
trans''') is marked with
ergative case.
*The subject of an intransitive verb ('''S
intrans''') and the object of a transitive verb ('''O''') are both marked with
absolutive case.
The following
Basque language Basque examples demonstrate ergative-absolutive case marking system:
{| class="wikitable"
|+ '''Ergative Language'''
! Sentence:
| colspan="2" | ''Gizona etorri da.''
|
| colspan="3" | ''Gizonak mutila ikusi du.''
|-
! Word:
| gizona
'''-∅'''
| etorri da
|
| gizona
'''-k'''
| mutila
'''-∅'''
| ikusi du
|-
! Gloss:
| the.man
'''-ABS'''
| has arrived
|
| the.man
'''-ERG'''
| boy
'''-ABS'''
| saw
|-
! Function:
|
'''Sintrans'''
| VERB
intrans
|
|
'''Strans'''
|
'''O'''
| VERB
trans
|-
! Translation:
| colspan="2" | 'The man has arrived.'
|
| colspan="3" | 'The man saw the boy.'
|}
In Basque, ''gizona'' is "the man" and ''mutil'' is "boy". ''Gizona'' has a different case marking depending on whether it is the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb. The first form is in the absolutive case, marked here by a
null morpheme (''-∅'') and the second form is in the ergative case, marked by a ''-k'' suffix. The subject of the intransitive sentence and the object of the transitive sentence both have the same absolutive case, while ergative case appears only on the transitive subject.
In contrast,
Japanese language Japanese, a nominative-accusative language, marks nouns with a different case marking system:
{| class="wikitable"
|+ '''Accusative Language'''
! Sentence:
| colspan="2" | ''Otoko ga tsuita.''
|
| colspan="3" | ''Otoko ga kodomo wo mita.''
|-
! Words:
| otoko
'''ga'''
| tsuita
|
| otoko
'''ga'''
| kodomo
'''wo'''
| mita
|-
! Gloss:
| man
'''NOM'''
| arrived
|
| man
'''NOM'''
| child
'''ACC'''
| saw
|-
! Function:
|
'''Sintrans'''
| VERB
intrans
|
|
'''Strans'''
|
'''O'''
| VERB
trans
|-
! Translation:
| colspan="2" | 'The man arrived.'
|
| colspan="2" | 'The man saw the child.'
|}
In this language, the subject ''otoko'' of intransitive and transitive sentences is marked with the same
nominative case ''ga''. However, the object of transitive sentence ''kodomo'' is marked with the
accusative case ''wo''.
If there's no case marking, ergativity can be marked through other means, such as in verbal morphology. For instance,
Abkhaz language Abkhaz has no morphological ergative case, but its verbal agreement structure is ergative. In languages with ergative-absolutive systems, the absolutive form is usually the most
markedness unmarked form of a word.
A number of languages have both ergative and accusative morphology. A typical example is a language that has ergative-absolutive marking on verbs and nominative-accusative case marking on nouns.
Georgian language Georgian also has an ergative alignment, but the subject is only marked with the ergative case for transitive verbs in the past tense (also known as the "aorist
screeve"). Compare:
:''Katsi vashls chams.'' "The man is eating an apple."
:''Kats'''ma''' vashli chama.'' "The man ate an apple."
''Kats-'' is the root of the word "man". In the first sentence (present continuous tense) the subject is in the nominative case (''katsi''). In the second sentence, which shows ergative alignment, the root is marked with the ergative suffix ''-ma''.
However, there are some intransitive verbs in Georgian that behave like transitive verbs, and therefore employ the ergative case in the past tense. Consider:
:''Kats'''ma''' daatsemina.'' "The man sneezed."
Although the verb ''sneeze'' is clearly intransitive, it is conjugated like any other transitive verbs. In Georgian there are a few verbs like these, and there has not been a clear-cut explanation as to why these verbs have evolved this way. One explanation is that verbs such as "sneeze" did use to have a direct object (the object being "nose" in the case of "sneeze") and over time lost these objects, yet kept their transitive behavior.
Syntactic ergativity
Ergativity may be manifested through syntax instead of or in addition to through morphology.
* Word order (for example, the absolutive argument comes before the verb and the ergative argument comes after it).
{{sectstub}}
Split ergativity
{{main|Split ergativity}}
The term ''ergative-absolutive'' is considered unsatisfactory by some, since there are very few languages without any patterns that exhibit
nominative-accusative language nominative-accusative alignment. Instead they posit that one should only speak of ''ergative-absolutive systems'', which languages employ to different degrees.
Many languages classified as ergative in fact show '''split ergativity''', whereby syntactic and/or morphological ergative pattern are conditioned by some part of the grammatical context (typically the persons of the verb arguments, or the tense/aspect of the verb).
In
Urdu language Urdu and
Hindi language Hindi, ergative case is marked on subjects in tenses showing perfective aspect for transitive and ditransitive verbs, while for other cases subjects appear in nominative case.
:लड़का किताब ख़रीदता है
:''laRkaa kitaab khariidtaa hai''
:
boy-NOMINATIVE book-NOMINATIVE buy-IMPERFECT be-PRESENT ¹
:"The boy buys a book."
:लड़के ने किताब ख़रीदी
:''laRke ne kitaab khariidii''
:
boy-ERGATIVE book-NOMINATIVE buy-PERFECT ¹
:"The boy bought a book."
::''(¹) The grammatical breakup has been simplified to show the features relevant to the example.''
In
Dyirbal language Dyirbal, pronouns are morphologically nominative-accusative when the subject is first or second person, but ergative when the subject is a third person.
Distribution of ergative languages
Prototypical ergative languages are, for the most part, restricted to specific regions of world: the
Caucasus, parts of
North America and
Mesoamerica, and
Australia.
Some specific languages are the following:
*
Basque language Basque
*
Berber languages (
Afro-Asiatic languages Afro-Asiatic)
*
Dyirbal language Dyirbal and several other
Australian Aboriginal languages, which are famous in the linguistic literature for their ergative patterns
*
Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut languages.
*
Mayan languages Mayan
*
Samoan language Sāmoan,
Tagalog language Tagalog, and many other
Austronesian languages
*
Sumerian language Sumerian
*
Tibetan language Tibetan
*Some
Caucasian languages, though not
South Caucasian languages Kartvelian languages such as
Georgian language Georgian
Many other languages have more limited ergativity, such as
Pashto and
Hindi, (
Indo-Iranian languages Indo-Iranian), where ergative behavior occurs only in the perfective.
Traces of ergativity in English
English does show a trace of something that could be regarded as ergativity. With an intransitive verb, adding the suffix ''-ee'' to the verb produces a label for the person performing the action:
:"John has retired." → "John is a retiree."
:"John has escaped." → "John is an escapee."
:"John is standing." → "John is a standee."
However, with a transitive verb, adding ''-ee'' does not produce a label for the person doing the action. Instead, it gives us a label for the person to whom the action is done:
:"Mike employs Susie." → "Susie is an employee."
:"Mike has inducted Susie." → "Susie is an inductee."
:"Mike has appointed Susie" → "Susie is an appointee."
The differing effect of the "-ee" suffix, depending on the transitivity of the verb, can be considered ergativity.
(Etymologically, the sense in which "-ee" denotes the object of a transitive verb is the original one,
arising from French
past participles in "-é". This would still be considered the prevalent sense in UK English:
the intransitive uses are all 19th century American coinages and all except "escapee" are still marked
as "chiefly U.S." by the ''Oxford English Dictionary''.)
English also has a number of so-called
ergative verbs, which allow the object of a transitive clause to become the subject of an intransitive clause.
Philippine languages as ergative
{{sectstub}}
Tagalog (Schachter 1976, 1977; Kroeger 1993).
See also
*
Ergative verb
*
Split ergativity
Bibliography
* Anderson, Stephen. (1976). On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In C. Li. (Ed.), ''Subject and topic'' (pp. 1-24). New York: Academic Press.
* Anderson, Stephen R. (1985). Inflectional morphology. In T. Shopen (Ed.), ''Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon'' (Vol. 3, pp. 150-201). Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
* Comrie, Bernard. (1978). Ergativity. In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.), ''Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language'' (pp. 329-394). Austin: University of Texas Press.
* Dixon, R. M. W. (1979). Ergativity. ''Language'', ''55'' (1), 59-138. (Revised as Dixon 1994).
* Dixon, R. M. W. (Ed.) (1987). ''Studies in ergativity''. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
* Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). ''Ergativity''. Cambridge University Press.
* Foley, William; & Van Valin, Robert. (1984). ''Functional syntax and universal grammar''. Cambridge University Press.
* Kroeger, Paul. (1993). ''Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog''. Stanford: CSLI.
* Mallinson, Graham; & Blake, Barry J. (1981). Agent and patient marking. ''Language typology: Cross-linguistic studies in syntax'' (Chap. 2, pp. 39-120). North-Holland linguistic series. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
* Plank, Frans. (Ed.). (1979). ''Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations''. London: Academic Press.
* Schachter, Paul. (1976). The subject in Philippine languages: Actor, topic, actor-topic, or none of the above. In C. Li. (Ed.), ''Subject and topic'' (pp. 491-518). New York: Academic Press.
* Schachter, Paul. (1977). Reference-related and role-related properties of subjects. In P. Cole & J. Sadock (Eds.), ''Syntax and semantics: Grammatical relations'' (Vol. 8, pp. 279-306). New York: Academic Press.
* Silverstein, Michael. (1976). Hierarchy of Features and Ergativity. In R.M.W. Dixon (ed.) ''Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages'' (pp. 112-171). New Jersey: Humanities Press. Reprinted in Pieter Muysken and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), ''Features and Projections'' (pp. 163-232). Dordrecht: Foris.
da:Ergative sprog
de:Ergativsprache
eo:Ergativa lingvo
fr:Ergativité
gl:Ergatividade
nl:Ergatieve taal
sv:Ergativa språk
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