The case systems of ergative languages are counter-intuitive to speakers of Indo-European languages.

The most common situation is for nouns to inflect according to a nominative-ergative pattern, while pronouns at least superficially follow a nominative-accusative pattern. That is, nouns have a single case (nominative) marking intransitive subject and transitive object functions, and another case (ergative) for transitive subject function.

For Podopa, the actor of most transitive verbs (and of some intransitive verbs as well) may occur with or without the ergative case suffix, but with a semantic difference. The ergative suffix indicates that the actor is acting independently, is self-motivated, and exerts his personal control over the situation; while its lack indicates that the actor is performing according to his set social obligations, not according to his own independent will, and does not assert his personal control over the situation.

The ergative case marks the agent of a transitive verb. The ergative suffix is -le/-re/-lle/-ʔille. The form of the ergative suffix is /-le/ for the indefinite and /-ʔille/ for the definite after the consonants /ʔ/, /k/, /t/, /p/, /b/, /ŋ/, /n/ and /m/.

In Section 1 I will discuss the existence of a class of ergative adjectives in Dutch[…]. It will be demonstrated that there are a number of arguments supporting the claim that the class of adjectives should be divided into ergative and unergative adjectives. A large number of adjectives that are unergative according to the tests provided in Section 2 appear to be ergative with respect to their argument structure.

Another difference between C. Barwar and Kurdish is the fact that in C. Barwar the compound perfect construction is not ergative. […] In Kurdish, on the other hand, the corresponding compound construction, which appears to have been the model for the NENA [North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic] construction, is ergative in form when the verb is transitive. The loss of the ergative inflection in C. Barwar and most other NENA dialects is again a development internal to NENA. The original ergative type of construction has survived only in a few Jewish dialects on the eastern periphery.

Samoan, for example, differs from the usual pattern displayed by split ergative languages in that the appearance of the ergative is grounded in sociolinguistic factors as well as syntactic ones. The more formal register of Samoan requires the ergative on all postverbal transitive subjects. The less formal register allows the ergative not to be expressed at all.

Unlike those with subjectivized ergatives, such locative clauses naturally do not allow for imperatives (*Contain the apples).

Woodbury (1975) does argue, however, that absolutives are more relativisable in Greenlandic than are ergatives, on the grounds that (1) RCs [Relative Clauses] formed on ergatives are somewhat more restricted in the distribution in matrix clauses (p. 21) than are those formed on absolutives, and (2) for certain verb classes ergatives cannot be relativised out of the active participle (p. 27).

Ergatives share close similarities with agentless passives: Both are intransitive, both lack an agent, while the patient appears in the subject position. As the acquisition data show, learners seem to treat ergatives like passives.

Combining two ergatives in one clause is not always ungrammatical in Agul; but one of the ergatives must be used in a non-agentive function, e.g. instrumental or temporal.

Ergative

Meaning

Adj

Noun

Synonyms

Antonyms