Ergativity

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eldin raigmore
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Re: Ergativity

Post by eldin raigmore »

Valoski wrote:The Subject of a Clause is the doer of a Verb that is intransitive.
The Agent of a Clause is the doer of a Verb that is transitive.
The Patient of Clause is the Object.

Just like Nominative represents both Subject and Agent, with Accusative being the Patient, Absolutive is the Subject and the Patient, with Ergative being the Agent. Easy.
No.

The Sole participant of a monovalent clause, such as a canonical intransitive clause, might be an Experiencer or a Stimulus or something else other than an Agent.

The Agent of a canonical transitive clause is the participant that controls, performs, effects, or instigates the action in the clause.

The Patient of a canonical transitive clause is the participant that is directly, physically, and visibly affected by the action in the clause. (In not-all-that-canonical transitive clauses, there may still be a Patient, but it might be indirectly, or non-physically, or invisibly affected. However, it is affected by the action in the clause.)

Canonical transitive clauses have an Agent and a Patient. They are distinct from each other and also distinct from the action. (For example, not like "rain"; is "rain" the Agent or the Patient or the Verb?)

Agent and Patient are semantic roles. Every language has them.

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Spoiler:
Subjects, OTOH, are Grammatical (or Syntactic) Relations (or Functions).
Read about Subjects here.

Maybe all languages have Subjects, maybe not. Certainly not all languages have Objects, though most seem to have one or two (and some seem to have three).
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Ergativity really has nothing to do with Subjects and Objects.

In a Nominative/Accusative language, the Agent of a canonical transitive clause, and the Sole participant of a canonical intransitive clause, are treated the same moprhosyntactically. In particular, if the language has case, the A and the S are the same case. If the language has case, the case for the A and the S is called the "NOMinative" case. (If any case is unmarked, the unmarked case is nearly always the case used for the S.)

In a Nominative/Accusative language, the Patient of a canonical transitive clause, has to be treated in some other morphosyntactic manner, different from how the Sand the A are treated. In particular, if the language has case, the case for the P is different from the NOMinative case used for the A and the S; and it will be called the ACCusative case.

OTOH:
In an Absolutive/Ergative language, the Patient of a canonical transitive clause, and the Sole participant of a canonical intransitive clause, are treated the same moprhosyntactically. In particular, if the language has case, the P and the S are the same case. If the language has case, the case for the P and the S is called the "ABSolutive" case. (If any case is unmarked, the unmarked case is nearly always the case used for the S.)

In an Absolutive/Ergative language, the Agent of a canonical transitive clause, has to be treated in some other morphosyntactic manner, different from how the Sand the P are treated. In particular, if the language has case, the case for the A is different from the ABSolutive case used for the P and the S; and it will be called the ERGative case.

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Is that clear?

Is that helpful?
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