Ergative-absolutive language
An ergative-absolutive language (or just ergative language) is one that marks the subject of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.
If the language has morphological case, then the verb arguments are marked thus:
- The subject of a transitive verb is marked with a case conventionally known as "ergative".
- The subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are both marked with a case called "absolutive".
If there's no case marking, the language can resort to word order (for example, the absolutive argument comes before the verb and the ergative argument comes after it). For instance, Abkhaz has no morphological ergative case, but its verbal agreement structure shows that it is definitely ergative.
See morphosyntactic alignment for a more technical explanation and a comparison with nominative-accusative languages.
Examples
The only ergative-absolutive European language is Basque. Note the following examples:
- Gizona etorri da. "The man has arrived."
- Gizonak mutila ikusi du. "The man saw the boy."
In Basque, gizon is "man", mutil is "boy", and a suffixed -a shows the definite form ("the"). You will notice that gizon is different depending on whether it is the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb. The first form is in the absolutive case (marked by a null morpheme) and the second form is in the ergative case (marked by a suffixed -k).
Other languages that employ an ergative-absolutive system are:
Split ergativity
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). Georgian verbs are ergative in the aorist but accusative in the present. Dyirbal verbs are nominative-accusative when the subject is first or second person, but ergative when the subject is a third person.
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.
See also
