ergativity

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English

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Etymology

From ergative +‎ -ity.

Pronunciation

Noun

ergativity (uncountable)

  1. (linguistics) The property of a grammar's (or, by extension, a language's) being ergative; the attribute of possessing a grammatical pattern such that the object of a transitive verb is treated the same way as the subject of an intransitive one, while the subject of the transitive verb is treated differently.
    • 1991, Ronald W. Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Descriptive Application, Volume 2, Stanford University Press, page 386:
      We can speak of ergative/absolutive organization whenever intransitive subjects pattern with transitive objects (to the exclusion of transitive subjects). So defined, ergativity is independent of case marking and has many linguistic manifestations, some being observable in any given language. At the same time, ergativity competes with accusativity even in languages where it represents the predominant pattern.
    • 1994, R. M. W. Dixon, Ergativity, Cambridge University Press, page 1:
      Ergativity is thus complementary to the familiar grammatical pattern of accusativity, in which one case (nominative) marks both intransitive and transitive subject, with another case (accusative) being employed for transitive object.
    • 2000, Javier Rivas, Ergativity and Transitive Gradients in the Accusative and Infinitive Construction, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Imprenta Universitaría, page 153,
      Apart from the types of split ergativity-accusativity dealt with in the previous section, there are languages which show degrees of ergativity in their morphology and also —although less frequently— in their syntax, . Actually, Dixon (1994: 172) claims that syntactic ergativity is much stranger cross-linguistically than some degree of morphological ergativity. There are many languages in the world which show some degree of ergativity.

Usage notes

  • Writers distinguish between morphological and syntactic ergativity, based on how it is manifested. (In studied languages, syntactic ergativity has not been observed to exist in the absence of the morphological sort.) For more details, see Ergativity § Realization of ergativity.

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