In linguistic typology, ergativeâÂÂabsolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the subject of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the subject of a transitive verb. All known ergative languages show ergativity in their morphology, and a small portion also show ergativity in their syntax.
The ergativeâÂÂabsolutive alignment is in contrast to nominativeâÂÂaccusative alignment, which is observed in English, where the single argument of an intransitive verb behaves grammatically like the agent (subject) of a transitive verb but different from the object of a transitive verb. In ergativeâÂÂabsolutive languages with grammatical case, the case for the single argument of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb is called the absolutive, and the case used for the agent of a transitive verb is called the ergative.
By one measure, 17% the world's languages use an ergative alignment in the marking of noun phrases. Examples of ergativeâÂÂabsolutive languages include Basque, Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, Sumerian, and certain Indo-European languages such as Pashto, the Kurdish languages and many others.
An ergative language maintains a syntactic or morphological equivalence (such as the same word order or grammatical case) for the object of a transitive verb and the single core argument of an intransitive verb, while treating the agent of a transitive verb differently. Such languages are said to operate with S/O syntactic pivot.
This contrasts with nominativeâÂÂaccusative languages such as English, where the single argument of an intransitive verb and the agent of a transitive verb (both called the subject) are treated alike and kept distinct from the object of a transitive verb. Such languages are said to operate with S/A (syntactic) pivot.
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These different arguments are usually symbolized as follows:
The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following:
See morphosyntactic alignment for a more technical explanation and a comparison with nominativeâÂÂaccusative languages.
The word subject, as it is typically defined in grammars of nominativeâÂÂaccusative languages, has a different application when referring to ergativeâÂÂabsolutive languages, or when discussing morphosyntactic alignment in general.
Ergative languages tend to be either verb-final or verb-initial; there are few, if any, ergative SVO languages.
Latin and Dyirbal are both languages which use case markings. Latin, however, has a nominativeâÂÂaccusative system, while Dyirbal has an ergativeâÂÂabsolutive one. By comparing the pattern of case markings in these languages, the concept of ergativity can be made clear.
Because nominativeâÂÂaccusative systems align the subject of an intransitive verb with the subject of a transitive verb, the subjects in Latin are marked with the nominative case marker "-us" for both transitive and intransitive verbs. Similarly, the object is always marked with the accusative marker "-um". <div style="display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 20px; align-items: flex-start;">
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Compare this to Dyirbal, which uses an ergativeâÂÂabsolutive system. In Dyirbal, a noun has no affixes when it is the sole subject of an intransitive verb as well as when it is the object of a transitive verb. Only transitive subjects have a case marking "-à Âgu". The fact that the case marking for the subject of an intransitive verb differs from the marking on subjects of a transitive verb is the key difference of ergativeâÂÂabsolutive languages.
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</div> With an intransitive verb, the subject does not get an affix in Dyirbal. While with a transitive verb, it is the object that does not get an affix.
Ergativity can be found in both morphological and syntactic behavior.
If the language has morphological case, then the verb arguments are marked thus:
If there is no case marking, ergativity can be marked through other means, such as in verbal morphology. For instance, Abkhaz and most Mayan languages have no morphological ergative case, but they have a verbal agreement structure that is ergative. In languages with ergativeâÂÂabsolutive agreement systems, the absolutive form is usually the most unmarked form of a word (exceptions include Nias and Tlapanec).
The following examples from Basque demonstrate an ergativeâÂÂabsolutive case marking system:
Here -ÃÂ represents a zero morpheme, as the absolutive case is unmarked in Basque with proper nouns (i.e., Martin, Diego, Berlin...). The forms for the ergative are -k after a vowel, and -ek after a consonant. It is a further rule in Basque grammar that in most cases a noun phrase must be closed by a determiner. The default determiner (commonly called the article, which is suffixed to common nouns and usually translatable by "the" in English) is -a in the singular and -ak in the plural, the plural being marked only on the determiner and never the noun. For common nouns, this default determiner is fused with the ergative case marker. Thus one obtains the following forms for gizon ("man"): gizon-a (man-the.sing.abs), gizon-ak (man-the.pl.abs), gizon-ak (man-the.sing.erg), gizon-ek (man-the.pl.erg). When fused with the article, the absolutive plural is homophonous with the ergative singular. See Basque grammar for details.
English pronouns change depending on if they are used in the nominative or accusative cases. The third person singular pronoun, "he/she" is used in the nominative case, while "him/her" is used in the accusative. As these cases do not exist in ergative languages, they will be mapped to cases in the ergativeâÂÂabsolutive system for this example. "He/she" is represented here as the ergative, and "him/her" as the absolutive. Note how the key difference between these systems is that "him smiles" is grammatical in the hypothetical ergative English because it is aligned with how objects are used in transitive sentences.
Georgian has an ergative alignment, but the agent is only marked with the ergative case in the perfective aspect (also known as the "aorist screeve"). Thus exhibiting a form of split ergativity. Compare:
is the root of the word "man". In the first sentence (present continuous tense) the agent is in the nominative case ( ). In the second sentence, which shows ergative alignment, the root is marked with the ergative suffix .
However, there are some intransitive verbs in Georgian that behave like transitive verbs, and therefore employ the ergative case in the past tense. Consider:
Although the verb "sneeze" is clearly intransitive, it is conjugated like a transitive verb. 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" used 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.
In rare cases, such as the Australian Aboriginal language Nhanda, different nominal elements may follow a different case-alignment template. In Nhanda, common nouns have ergativeâÂÂabsolutive alignmentâÂÂlike in most Australian languagesâÂÂbut most pronouns instead follow a nominativeâÂÂaccusative template. In Nhanda, the absolutive case has a null suffix while ergative case is marked with some allomorph of the suffixes -nggu or -lu. See the common noun paradigm at play below:
Intransitive Subject (ABS)
Transitive Subject-Object (ERG-ABS)
Compare the above examples with the case marking of pronouns in Nhanda below, wherein all subjects (regardless of verb transitivity) are marked (in this case with a null suffix) the same for case while transitive objects take the accusative suffix -nha.
Intransitive Pronoun Subject (NOM)
Transitive Pronoun Subject-Object (NOM-ACC)
Ergativity may be manifested through syntax in addition to morphology. While all known ergative languages show ergativity in their morphology, only a small portion also show ergativity in their syntax. As with morphology, syntactic ergativity can be placed on a continuum, whereby certain syntactic operations may pattern accusatively and others ergatively. The degree of syntactic ergativity is then dependent on the number of syntactic operations that treat the subject like the object. Syntactic ergativity is also referred to as inter-clausal ergativity, as it typically appears in the relation of two clauses.
Syntactic ergativity may appear in:
Example of syntactic ergativity in the "conjunction reduction" construction (coordinated clauses) in Dyirbal in contrast with English conjunction reduction. (The subscript (i) indicates coreference.)
Crucially, the fifth sentence has an S/A pivot and thus is ill-formed in Dyirbal (syntactically ergative); on the other hand, the seventh sentence has an S/O pivot and thus is ill-formed in English (syntactically accusative).
Few ergative languages are purely ergative. Many ergative systems have parts of their grammar which do not maintain an ergative pattern, a phenomenon known as split ergativity. Some linguists have claimed that all ergative languages have split ergativity. The two main areas of grammar that often exhibit a split in ergativity are grammatical person and grammatical aspect. In both, cross-linguistic patterns have been observed which make the split of ergativity more predicable.
With grammatical person, a directional hierarchy has been observed cross-linguistically which constricts which grammatical persons may exhibit ergativity in the same language. In languages following this pattern of split ergativity, there will be a particular point on the hierarchy in which everything to the left will exhibit ergativity, and everything to the right will not. For example, Dyirbal has split ergativity on grammatical person and divides the hierarchy at the point of 1st/2nd person pronouns. 1st/2nd person pronouns use an accusative pattern, and everything to the left of it on the spectrum follows an ergative pattern.
The same principle has been observed with grammatical aspect. The directionality hierarchy is as follows:
In Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), the ergative case is marked on agents in the perfective aspect for transitive and ditransitive verbs (also for intransitive verbs when they are volitional), while in other situations agents appear in the nominative case.
In the Northern Kurdish language Kurmanji, the ergative case is marked on agents and verbs of transitive verbs in past tenses, for the events actually occurred in the past. Present, future and "future in the past" tenses show no ergative mark neither for agents nor the verbs. For example:
but:
In sentences (1) to (4), there is no ergativity (transitive and intransitive verbs alike). In sentences (6) and (8), the ergative case is marked on agents and verbs.
Many languages with ergative marking display what is known as optional ergativity, where the ergative marking is not always expressed in all situations. McGregor (2010) gives a range of contexts when we often see optional ergativity, and argues that the choice is often not truly optional but is affected by semantics and pragmatics. Unlike split ergativity, which occurs regularly but in limited locations, optional ergativity can occur in a range of environments, but may not be used in a way that appears regular or consistent.
Optional ergativity may be motivated by:
Languages from Australia, New Guinea and Tibet have been shown to have optional ergativity.
A World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) sample of 190 languages found 32 (17%) of languages use an ergative alignment in the marking of noun phrases. Prototypical ergative languages are, for the most part, restricted to specific regions of the world: Mesopotamia (Kurdish, and some extinct languages), the Caucasus, the Americas, the Tibetan Plateau, and Australia and parts of New Guinea.
Specific languages and language families include:
Certain Australian Aboriginal languages (e.g., Wangkumara) possess an intransitive case and an accusative case along with an ergative case, and lack an absolutive case; such languages are called tripartite languages or ergativeâÂÂaccusative languages.
Several scholars have hypothesized that Proto-Indo-European was an ergative language, although this hypothesis is controversial.
Sign languages (for example, Nepali Sign Language) should also generally be considered ergative in the patterning of actant incorporation in verbs. In sign languages that have been studied, classifier handshapes are incorporated into verbs, indicating the subject of intransitive verbs when incorporated, and the object of transitive verbs. (If we follow the "semantic phonology" model proposed by William Stokoe (1991) this ergativeâÂÂabsolutive patterning also works at the level of the lexicon: thus in Nepali Sign Language the sign for TEA has the motion for the verb DRINK with a manual alphabet handshape à ¤ /ca/ (standing for the first letter of the Nepali word TEA à ¤Âà ¤¿à ¤¯à ¤¾ /chiya:/) being incorporated as the object.)
English has a number of so-called ergative verbs, for which the object of the verb when transitive is equivalent to the subject of the verb when intransitive.
When English nominalizes a clause, the underlying subject of an intransitive verb and the underlying object of a transitive verb are both marked with the possessive case or with the preposition "of". The underlying subject of a transitive is marked differently (typically with "by" as in a passive construction):