What is an "ergative language"? [Re: 10 questions about Nahuat-l and the Aztecs]

[Joost Kremers]

basically, an ergative language is a language with the following property:
the subject of an intransitive verb takes the same case (called the
absolutive) as the _object_ of a transitive verb, whereas the subject of a
transitive verb has a different case (called the ergative).

to see how this works, first look at the pattern in a
'nominative/accusative' language (e.g., english, french, latin, etc.):

i	a	the man-P sees the dog-Q
	b	the man-P is running

take P and Q to be case endings: the subject of the transitive (ia) has the
same ending as the subject of the intransitve (ib), namely P. the object of
the transitive (ia) has a different ending, namely Q. in an ergative
language, the pattern is thus:

ii	a	the man-P sees the dog-Q
	b	the man-Q is running

as you can see, the subject of the intransitive (ib) has the same ending as
the _object_ of the transitive (ia).

you could say that every sentence in an ergative language has a passive
form. cf. the (semantic) object of a passive verb in a nom/acc language
such as latin takes nominative case, whereas the (semantic) subject has
ablative:

iv	canis homine videtur
	the-dog(NOM) the-man(ABL) is-seen

This comparison is not a bad one, as ergative languages usually have a
so-called 'antipassive' formation, which creates a sentence structure
similar to a nom/acc structure.

one remark: R. Dixon (in his book _Ergativity_, Cambrigde UP, 1994) claims
that there is not a language on earth that is completely ergative.
languages generally only show ergativity in some aspects of their
structure, whereas they are nom/acc in others. e.g., a language can be
ergative in past tense but nom/acc in present tense. or it can be ergative
in its pronominal system, but nom/acc with full nouns, etc. (this of course
contrasts with nom/acc languages: there are many languages that are purely
nom/acc without any ergative feature.)

HTH

joost kremers


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Joost Kremers
Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen
Talen en Culturen van het Midden-Oosten
Postbus 9103
6500 HD Nijmegen
tel: 024-3612996
fax: 024-3611972