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Ergative case
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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.[3]
Characteristics
[edit]In such languages, the ergative case is typically marked (most salient), while the absolutive case is unmarked. Recent work in case theory has vigorously supported the idea that the ergative case identifies the agent (the intentful performer of an action) of a verb.[4]
In Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) for example, the ergative case is used to mark subjects of transitive verbs and possessors of nouns. This syncretism with the genitive is commonly referred to as the relative case.
Nez Perce has a three-way nominal case system with both ergative (-nim) and accusative (-ne) plus an absolute (unmarked) case for intransitive subjects: hipáayna qíiwn ‘the old man arrived’; hipáayna wewúkiye ‘the elk arrived’; wewúkiyene péexne qíiwnim ‘the old man saw an elk’.
Sahaptin has an ergative noun case (with suffix -nɨm) that is limited to transitive constructions only when the direct object is 1st or 2nd person: iwapáatayaaš łmámanɨm ‘the old woman helped me’; paanáy iwapáataya łmáma ‘the old woman helped him/her’ (direct); páwapaataya łmámayin ‘the old woman helped him/her’ (inverse).
In languages with an optional ergative, the choice between marking the ergative case or not depends on semantic or pragmatics aspects such as marking focus on the argument.[5]
Other languages that use the ergative case are Georgian, Chechen, and other Caucasian languages, Mayan languages, Mixe–Zoque languages, Wagiman and other Australian Aboriginal languages as well as Basque, Burushaski and Tibetan. Among all Indo-European languages, only Yaghnobi, Kurdish language varieties (including Kurmanji, Zazaki and Sorani)[6] and Pashto from the Iranian languages and Hindi/Urdu, along with some other Indo-Aryan languages, are ergative.
The ergative case is also a feature of some constructed languages such as Na'vi, Ithkuil and Black Speech.
See also
[edit]
Look up ergative case or ergative in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Citations
[edit]- ^ Edzard, Dietz Otto (2003). Sumerian Grammar. BRILL. p. 36. ISBN 978-90-474-0340-1.
- ^ Loos, Eugene. "Glossary of linguistic terms". LinguaLinks Library 5.0 Plus. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
- ^ Haspelmath, Martin. 2022. Ergative, absolutive, accusative and nominative as comparative concepts. In Iomdin, Leonid & Milićević, Jasmina & Polguère, Alain (eds.), Lifetime linguistic inspirations: To Igor Mel’čuk, 201–213. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. (doi:10.5281/zenodo.7625026) (https://zenodo.org/record/7625026)
- ^ Woolford, Ellen. "Lexical Case, Inherent Case, and Argument Structure". Feb 2005.
- ^ William B. McGregor (1 July 2010). "Optional ergative case marking systems in a typological-semiotic perspective". Lingua. 120: 1610–1636. doi:10.1016/J.LINGUA.2009.05.010. ISSN 0024-3841. Wikidata Q122816430.
- ^ Theodora Bynon. 1979. The Ergative Construction in Kurdish. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Vol. 42, No. 2:211-224.
Ergative case
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Fundamentals
Definition
The ergative case is a grammatical case in certain languages that marks the subject (or agent) of a transitive verb, distinguishing it from the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb, both of which typically receive the absolutive case.[5][2] This marking system highlights the patient's (object's) prominence in transitive constructions, treating it syntactically and morphologically similar to the single argument of intransitive verbs.[5] In abstract terms, a transitive sentence structure can be represented as ERG-ABS-V (agent in ergative, patient in absolutive, followed by the verb), while an intransitive sentence follows ABS-V (single argument in absolutive, followed by the verb).[2] This pattern contrasts with more common nominative-accusative systems, where subjects of both transitive and intransitive verbs share the nominative case.[5] The term "ergative" derives from the Ancient Greek word ergon (ἔργον), meaning "work," "deed," or "action," which aptly reflects the case's association with the agent performing the transitive action.[6][7] The concept of ergative marking was first systematically described in the early 19th century through observations of non-Indo-European languages, notably through studies of Basque grammar by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1801, a language that exhibits ergative-absolutive alignment.[8] The specific term "ergative" was coined in 1912 by the German linguist and Caucasologist Adolf Dirr in his grammatical description of the Rutul language, a Northeast Caucasian tongue exhibiting clear ergative-absolutive patterns.[9][10] Dirr's usage established the label for this case type in linguistic typology, building on prior informal descriptions of similar phenomena in Caucasian and other language families.[6]Ergative-Absolutive Alignment
In ergative-absolutive alignment, the single argument of an intransitive verb (S) and the patient-like argument of a transitive verb (O) are treated identically, typically marked by the absolutive case or left unmarked, while the agent-like argument of a transitive verb (A) is distinguished by the ergative case or a separate marker.[1] This pattern groups arguments based on their role in the event structure, with S and O sharing morphological and syntactic properties such as case assignment, agreement, or extraction possibilities.[11] This alignment contrasts sharply with nominative-accusative systems, where S and A are grouped together in the nominative case (or unmarked), and O is singled out in the accusative case. The following table illustrates the structural differences abstractly:| Alignment Type | Intransitive (S) | Transitive A (Agent) | Transitive O (Patient) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ergative-Absolutive | Absolutive (unmarked or -∅) | Ergative (marked, e.g., -ERG) | Absolutive (unmarked or -∅) |
| Nominative-Accusative | Nominative (unmarked or -NOM) | Nominative (unmarked or -NOM) | Accusative (marked, e.g., -ACC) |
Occurrence in Languages
Pure Ergative Languages
Pure ergative languages are those in which nominal case marking follows a consistent ergative-absolutive alignment across all grammatical contexts, including tenses, aspects, and verb types, without shifts to nominative-accusative patterns or other splits.[1] In this system, the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb both receive absolutive marking (often unmarked or zero), while the subject of a transitive verb bears distinct ergative marking, typically via a suffix or postposition.[6] This uniform patterning distinguishes pure ergativity from mixed systems and highlights a core typological feature where transitivity determines case assignment without additional conditioning factors. Fully pure ergative systems are rare and subject to typological debate, as many languages exhibit subtle variations.[1][2] Key examples of pure ergative languages span several families and isolates. In the isolate Basque, spoken in Europe, nouns and adjectives consistently mark transitive subjects with the ergative suffix -k, while intransitive subjects and transitive objects remain unmarked (absolutive). Australian languages from the Pama-Nyungan family, such as Dyirbal and Warlpiri, exemplify this pattern through dependent-marking on nouns: in Dyirbal, the ergative suffix -ŋgu identifies transitive subjects, with absolutive zero-marking for the rest.[6] In the Caucasus, Avar (Nakh-Dagestanian) employs ergative case for transitive agents via a suffix such as -a or -ca depending on the noun class, maintaining absolutive for S and O arguments uniformly across verb classes.[12] Geographically, pure ergative languages are concentrated in specific regions, reflecting areal and historical influences rather than genetic relatedness. They predominate in Australia, where over 100 Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan languages exhibit this alignment, comprising a significant portion of the continent's linguistic diversity.[6] The Caucasus region hosts several in the Nakh-Dagestanian branch, such as Avar, amid a hotspot of typological complexity.[12] Isolated instances appear in Europe (Basque in the Pyrenees).[1] This distribution underscores the rarity of pure ergativity in major families like Indo-European (where it appears only in split forms, e.g., Pashto) or Niger-Congo, which favor accusative patterns.[1] Accompanying pure ergativity, these languages often display head-marking or polysynthetic structures, where verbs incorporate extensive morphological information about arguments. Australian examples such as Warlpiri combine dependent case marking on nouns with optional clitics on verbs that reflect absolutive arguments, enhancing the ergative pattern.[1] In Avar, agglutinative verb morphology supports the alignment through agreement or postpositions, contributing to complex clause structures without disrupting the core case consistency.[12]Split Ergative Systems
Split ergativity refers to a grammatical alignment system in which a language employs both ergative-absolutive and nominative-accusative patterns, with the specific alignment varying according to contextual factors such as tense, aspect, animacy, or nominal type.[1] This variation contrasts with the uniform ergative alignment found in pure ergative languages, where the pattern applies consistently across all contexts.[1] One common type of split is conditioned by tense, aspect, or mood (TAM), where ergative marking appears in perfective or past contexts but shifts to accusative in imperfective or present ones.[13] In Indo-Iranian languages like Sanskrit and Persian, this tense-based split emerged diachronically through the reanalysis of periphrastic perfect constructions, leading to ergative case on transitive subjects only in past perfective tenses.[14] Similarly, in Hindi-Urdu, transitive subjects receive ergative marking in perfective aspects but not in non-perfective ones, reflecting an aspectual split that prioritizes completed events for ergative alignment. Tibetan exhibits a similar aspect-based split, using the ergative particle kyis for transitive subjects in perfective contexts.[1][15] Another type involves the animacy hierarchy, where alignment depends on the semantic features of arguments, such as person, animacy, or definiteness, with higher-ranking elements (e.g., speech-act participants) often following accusative patterns while lower-ranking ones (e.g., inanimates) show ergative marking.[16] In Inuit languages, this hierarchy influences case assignment, treating highly animate arguments accusatively while less animate ones align ergatively.[1] Tsez, a Nakh-Daghestanian language, exhibits a hierarchy-based split in its agreement and case systems, where transitive subjects trigger absolutive agreement only with lower-animacy objects, otherwise showing ergative patterns.[17] Splits based on morphological complexity, such as differences between nominals and pronouns, represent another major type, often seen in languages where full noun phrases follow ergative alignment but pronouns adopt accusative forms.[16] In Australian languages like Nhanda, common nouns display ergative-absolutive case marking, whereas most pronouns use nominative-accusative templates. Austronesian languages such as Tagalog show a nominal-pronominal split, with full noun phrases exhibiting ergative features in voice alternations while pronominal clitics follow accusative patterns in cross-referencing. Mayan languages, such as Yucatec Maya, display ergative-absolutive alignment in verbal cross-referencing, with Set A markers for ergative arguments (transitive subjects) and Set B markers for absolutive arguments (intransitive subjects and transitive objects), but exhibit splits based on aspect and agent focus constructions.[16][18] Split ergative systems are more prevalent than pure ergativity worldwide, occurring in approximately 25% of languages with case marking, as ergative patterns rarely apply uniformly and often coexist with accusative ones.[19] Theoretically, these splits provide evidence of diachronic change, frequently arising from the reanalysis of passive or antipassive constructions into active transitive forms, as seen in the historical development of Indo-Aryan ergativity from accusative prototypes.[14] They also suggest influences from language contact, where ergative features may spread or hybridize through substrate effects in multilingual settings, such as in Mayan or Iranian languages.[20]Morphological Realization
Case Marking Strategies
Ergative case is morphologically realized in diverse ways across languages, most commonly through suffixation on noun phrases in dependent-marking systems, where the transitive subject receives an overt affix to distinguish it from the unmarked absolutive argument.[1] Prefixing for ergative case on nominals is rare, but it appears in verbal morphology of head-marking languages, particularly in polysynthetic structures where ergative arguments trigger prefixes on the verb stem.[1] The absolutive, aligning intransitive subjects with transitive objects, is frequently zero-marked, leaving the ergative as the sole overt indicator of the transitive subject's role, a pattern observed in many Australian and Papuan languages.[21] Syntactically, ergative marking can be dependent, affixing directly to noun phrases, or head-marking, where the verb agrees with the ergative argument through dedicated morphemes, often in ergative-absolutive patterns that cross-reference both ergative and absolutive roles.[1] In polysynthetic languages, this head-marking extends to full cross-referencing of arguments on the verb, treating the ergative as a primary trigger for agreement while absolutive arguments may receive set-based markers. This contrasts with purely dependent systems, where marking remains on the noun phrases without verbal incorporation of case features. Ergative systems vary in their treatment of intransitive subjects, distinguishing strict-S patterns—where all such subjects uniformly take absolutive marking—from fluid-S systems, in which the marking alternates between ergative and absolutive based on the subject's agentivity or verb semantics, allowing a single noun to shift roles across contexts.[22] Cross-linguistically, ergative doubling occurs in mixed head- and dependent-marking languages, where the ergative argument receives both nominal case affixes or clitics and corresponding verbal agreement, reinforcing the role through redundant morphology as seen in certain Mayan languages. These strategies highlight the flexibility of ergative marking in aligning with ergative-absolutive patterns while adapting to language-specific morphological preferences.[1]Examples from Specific Languages
In Basque, the ergative case is morphologically realized as the suffix -k on transitive subjects and unergative intransitive subjects, while the absolutive (unmarked) appears on transitive objects and unaccusative intransitive subjects. A classic transitive example is gizonak liburua irakurri du, glossed as gizon-ak book-Ø read AUX.3sg.ABS.3sg.ERG ('the man-ERG book-ABS read AUX'; the man reads the book).[23] For an unergative intransitive, consider gizonak lo egin du ('the man-ERG sleep do AUX'; the man sleeps), where the subject takes ergative marking. In contrast, an unaccusative intransitive like liburua erori da ('the book-ABS fall AUX'; the book falls) uses absolutive on the subject. This split-S pattern exemplifies Basque's ergative-absolutive alignment in core arguments.[24] Dyirbal, an Australian language, exhibits strict morphological ergativity across its nominal system, with the ergative suffix -ŋgu on transitive agents and absolutive (zero-marked) on intransitive subjects and transitive patients; this holds in both everyday speech and the specialized Djalŋuy register used to avoid direct reference to certain kin, such as mothers-in-law, which replaces everyday lexicon but retains the same case marking. A representative transitive sentence is yaraŋgu bural bayi ('man-ERG hit-PAST woman-ABS'; the man hit the woman). For an intransitive, balan yara banagay ('man-ABS lie.down-NPST'; the man is lying down) shows zero absolutive on the single argument. In the mother-in-law register, the equivalent transitive might substitute words like guŋga (Djalŋuy for 'hit') while preserving bayiŋgu (woman-ERG) for the agent in a sentence like bayiŋgu balan bura-n ('woman-ERG man-ABS hit-PAST'; the woman hit the man). This uniformity underscores Dyirbal's syntactic and morphological ergativity.[25] Georgian displays split ergativity conditioned by tense-aspect, with ergative-absolutive alignment in aorist (perfective) clauses but nominative-accusative in other series; ergativity also appears in certain spatial and postpositional constructions independent of tense. In the aorist, a transitive example is monadire-m mizan-s ṭq̇via esrola ('hunter-ERG target-DAT bullet-NOM shoot:AOR.3sg≫3sg'; the hunter shot a bullet at the target), where the agent is ergative (-m), the direct object (bullet) is nominative (unmarked), and the spatial target is dative (-s).[26] An intransitive aorist like bič̇-i moq̇evi ('boy-NOM come:AOR.3sg'; the boy came) uses nominative on the subject, reflecting the split. For spatial cases, ergative marking occurs with postpositions like romel-ma-c (which-ERG-REL) in relative clauses involving location, as in romel-ma-c ṭq̇e-ši nax-a ('which-ERG forest-IN see:AOR.3sg'; who saw [it] in the forest), where the spatial locative -ši combines with ergative on the embedded subject. This illustrates how Georgian's version marking and spatial postpositions integrate ergative elements.[27] In the Inuit language family (Eskimo-Aleut), ergative-absolutive case marking applies to both nouns and pronouns, but a hierarchy-based split emerges in agreement and relativization, where higher-ranked arguments (e.g., 1st/2nd person pronouns) preferentially control morphology, while 3rd person nouns and pronouns show consistent ergativity; full noun phrases obligatorily mark ergative on transitive subjects, whereas pronouns often cliticize to the verb. A transitive example with nouns is anguti-up qimmi-t taku-juq ('man-ERG dog-ABS see-3sg.S/3sg.O'; the man sees the dog).[28] For pronouns, taku-qqau-jara ('see-PST-1sg.S/3sg.O'; I saw him/her) embeds the ergative pattern in verbal agreement, with the subject implicit but hierarchically prominent. An intransitive with a noun is qimmi tusa-juq ('dog-ABS work-3sg.S'; the dog works), absolutive unmarked. In hierarchy effects, relativization favors absolutive nouns over ergative ones unless overridden by person ranking, as in * [niri-juq] surusi* ('eat-3sg.S child-ABS'; the child who ate), where the absolutive patient relativizes easily, but ergative agents require antipassive for extraction. This highlights the interplay of case and hierarchy in Inuit ergativity.[29]| Language | Intransitive Sentence | Gloss | Translation | Transitive Sentence | Gloss | Translation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basque | Pirata-Ø abiatzen da. | pirate-ABS depart AUX. | The pirate departs. | Medikua-k pirata-Ø beldurtzen du. | doctor-ERG pirate-ABS frighten AUX. | The doctor frightens the pirate. |
| Dyirbal | Balan yara banagay. | man-ABS lie.down-NPST. | The man is lying down. | Yaraŋgu bural bayi. | man-ERG hit-PAST woman-ABS. | The man hit the woman. |
| Georgian (Aorist) | Bič̇-i moq̇evi. | boy-NOM come:AOR.3sg. | The boy came. | Monadire-m mizan-s ṭq̇via esrola. | hunter-ERG target-DAT bullet-NOM shoot:AOR.3sg≫3sg. | The hunter shot a bullet at the target. |