linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of

morphosyntactic alignment In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument of ...

in which the subject of an

intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Add ...

behaves like the

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an a ...

of a

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...

, and differently from the subject of a transitive verb. Examples include

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

, Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, Sumerian, and certain

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

(such as

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

and the

Kurdish languages Kurdish (, , ) is a Northwestern Iranian language or group of languages spoken by Kurds in the region of Kurdistan, namely in southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, northwest Iran, and northern Syria. It is also spoken in northeast Iran, as well a ...

and many

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east ...

like Hindustani). It has also been attributed to the Semitic modern Aramaic (also called Neo-Aramaic) languages. Ergative languages are classified into two groups: those that are morphologically ergative but syntactically behave as

accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

(for instance, Basque, Pashto and

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

) and those that, on top of being ergative morphologically, also show ergativity in syntax. Languages that belong to the former group are more numerous than those to the latter. The ergative-absolutive alignment is in contrast to nominative–accusative alignment, which is observed in English and most other Indo-European languages, where the single argument of an intransitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She walks") behaves grammatically like the agent ( subject) of a transitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She finds it") but different from the object of a transitive verb ("her" in the sentence "He likes her"). When ergative–absolutive alignment is coded by

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), n ...

, the case used for the single argument of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb is the

absolutive In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative� ...

, and the case used for the agent of a transitive verb is the ergative. In nominative-accusative languages, the case for the single argument of an intransitive verb and the agent of a transitive verb is the

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...

, while the case for the direct object of a transitive verb is the

. Many languages have ergative–absolutive alignment only in some parts of their grammar (e.g., in the case marking of nouns), but nominative-accusative alignment in other parts (e.g., in the case marking of pronouns, or in person agreement). This is known as

split ergativity In linguistic typology, split ergativity is a feature of certain languages where some constructions use ergative syntax and morphology, but other constructions show another pattern, usually nominative–accusative. The conditions in which ergat ...

Ergative vs. accusative languages

An ergative language maintains a

syntactic In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency ...

or morphological equivalence (such as the same

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...

) 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 {{Linguistic_typology_topics The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve" in a given language. This usually means the following: *If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot. *I ...

. This contrasts with nominative–accusative languages such as English, where the single

argument An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persu ...

of an intransitive verb and the

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuran ...

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. (reference for figure:Friend, Some Syntactic and Morphological Features of Suleimaniye Kurdish, UCLA, 1985) These different arguments are usually symbolized as follows: * A = agent of transitive verb * O = object of transitive verb (also symbolized as P for "patient") * S = core argument (i.e. subject) of intransitive verb The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following: ''See

for a more technical explanation and a comparison with nominative–accusative languages.'' The word ''subject'', as it is typically defined in grammars of nominative–accusative languages, has a different application when referring to ergative–absolutive languages, or when discussing

in general. Ergative languages tend to be either verb-final or verb-initial; there are few, if any, ergative SVO languages.

Realization of ergativity

Ergativity can be found in both morphological and

behavior.

Morphological ergativity

If the language has morphological

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

, then the

verb argument In linguistics, an argument is an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries. In this regard, the '' complement'' is a closely related concept. Most predicate ...

s are marked thus: * The agent of a transitive verb (A) is marked as

ergative case In grammar, the ergative case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that identifies a nominal phrase as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages. Characteristics In such languages, the ergative case is typically m ...

, or as a similar case such as oblique. * The core argument of an intransitive verb (S) and the object of a transitive verb (O) are both marked with

absolutive case In grammar, the absolutive case ( abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominativ ...

. 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 The Mayan languages In linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and a ...

have no morphological ergative case, but they have a verbal agreement structure that is ergative. In languages with ergative–absolutive agreement systems, the absolutive form is usually the most

unmarked In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...

form of a word (exceptions include

Nias Nias (, Nias: ''Tanö Niha'') is an island located off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Nias is also the name of the archipelago () of which the island is the centre, but also includes the Batu Islands to the southeast and the small ...

and Tlapanec). The following examples from

demonstrate an ergative–absolutive case marking system: Here ''-Ø'' 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 Determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a term used in some models of grammatical description to describe a word or affix belonging to a class of noun modifiers. A determiner combines with a noun to express its reference. Examp ...

. 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 This article provides a sketch of Basque grammar. Basque is the language of the Basque people of the Basque Country or Euskal Herria, which borders the Bay of Biscay in Western Europe. Noun phrases The Basque noun phrase is structured quite di ...

for details. Another example from

Circassian language Circassian (; ), also known as Cherkess ( ), is a subdivision of the Northwest Caucasian language family, spoken by the Circassian people. There are two main variants of the Circassian language, defined by their literary standards, Adyghe (; a ...

that demonstrates an ergative–absolutive case marking system while using the same verb "break" in both intransitive and transitive forms: Here, "table" has the absolutive case mark -р /-r/ while "man" has the ergative case mark -м /-m/. We also have the verb "break" in intransitive form "мэкъутэ" and transitive form "екъутэ". In the example above, we specifically used SOV order, but Circassian allows any order. In contrast, Japanese is a nominative–accusative language: In this language, the argument of the intransitive and agent of the transitive sentence are marked with the same

nominative case In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants ...

particle ''ga'', while the object of the transitive sentence is marked with the

accusative case In grammar, the accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "he ...

''o''. If one sets: A = agent of a transitive verb; S = argument of an intransitive verb; O = object of a transitive verb, then we can contrast normal nominative–accusative English with a hypothetical ergative English: A number of languages have both ergative and accusative morphology. A typical example is a language that has nominative-accusative marking on verbs and ergative–absolutive case marking on nouns. Georgian has an ergative alignment, but the agent is only marked with the ergative case in the

perfective The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole, i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imp ...

aspect (also known as the "aorist

screeve Screeve is a term of grammatical description in traditional Georgian grammars that roughly corresponds to tense–aspect–mood marking in the Western grammatical tradition. It derives from the Georgian word . Formally, it refers to a set of ...

"). Compare: : () "The man is eating an apple." : () "The man ate an apple." 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: : () "The man sneezed." 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.

Differing noun-pronoun alignment

In rare cases, such as the

Australian Aboriginal language The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

Nhanda, different nominal elements may follow a different case-alignment template. In Nhanda, common nouns have ergative-absolutive alignment—like in most Australian languages—but most pronouns instead follow a nominative-accusative template. In Nhanda, the

has a null suffix while

is marked with some

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or in other words, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variatio ...

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

suffix ''-nha''. Intransitive Pronoun Subject (NOM) Transitive Pronoun Subject-Object (NOM-ACC)

Syntactic ergativity

Ergativity may be manifested through syntax, such as saying "Arrived I" for "I arrived", in addition to morphology. Syntactic ergativity is quite rare, and while all languages that exhibit it also feature morphological ergativity, few morphologically ergative languages have ergative 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: *

Word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...

(for example, the absolutive argument comes before the verb and the ergative argument comes after it) *

Syntactic pivot {{Linguistic_typology_topics The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve" in a given language. This usually means the following: *If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot. *I ...

s *

Relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence ''I met a man who wasn ...

s – determining which arguments are available for relativization * Subordination *

Switch reference In linguistics, switch-reference (SR) describes any clause-level morpheme that signals whether certain prominent arguments in 'adjacent' clauses are coreferential. In most cases, it marks whether the subject of the verb in one clause is corefer ...

Example

Example of syntactic ergativity in the " conjunction reduction" construction ( coordinated clauses) in Dyirbal in contrast with English conjunction reduction. (The subscript (i) indicates coreference.) English ( SVO word order): # Father returned. # Father saw mother. # Mother saw father. # Father_(i) returned and father_(i) saw mother. # Father_(i) returned and _____(i) saw mother. # Father_(i) returned and mother saw father_(i). #* Father_(i) returned and mother saw _____(i). (ill-formed, because S and deleted O cannot be coreferential.) Dyirbal ( OSV word order): # Ŋuma banagan^yu. (''Father returned.'') # Yabu ŋumaŋgu buṛan. (lit. ''Mother father-''ŋgu'' saw'', i.e. ''Father saw mother.'') # Ŋuma yabuŋgu buṛan. (lit. ''Father mother-''ŋgu'' saw'', i.e. ''Mother saw father.'') # Ŋuma_(i) banagan^yu, yabu ŋumaŋgu_(i) buṛan. (lit. ''Father''_(i)'' returned, mother father-''ŋgu_(i)'' saw'', i.e. ''Father returned, father saw mother.'') #* Ŋuma_(i) banagan^yu, yabu _____(i) buṛan. (lit. *''Father''_(i)'' returned, mother ____''_(i)'' saw''; ill-formed, because S and deleted A cannot be coreferential.) # Ŋuma_(i) banagan^yu, ŋuma_(i) yabuŋgu buṛan. (lit. ''Father''_(i)'' returned, father''_(i)'' mother-''ŋgu'' saw'', i.e. ''Father returned, mother saw father.'') # Ŋuma_(i) banagan^yu, _____(i) yabuŋgu buṛan. (lit. ''Father''_(i)'' returned, ____''_(i)'' mother-''ŋgu'' saw'', i.e. ''Father returned, mother saw father.'') 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).

Split ergativity

The term ''ergative–absolutive'' is considered unsatisfactory by some, since there are very few languages without any patterns that exhibit nominative–accusative alignment. Instead they posit that one should only speak of ''ergative–absolutive systems'', which languages employ to different degrees. Many languages classified as ergative in fact show split ergativity, whereby syntactic and/or morphological ergative patterns are conditioned by the grammatical context, typically person or the tense/aspect of the verb.

is unusual in having an almost fully ergative system in case-marking and verbal

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus (disambiguation), a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of ...

, though it shows thoroughly nominative–accusative syntactic alignment. In Hindustani (

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

and

), the

is marked on agents in the

perfective aspect The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole, i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the ...

for transitive and ditransitive verbs (also for

s when they are volitional), while in other situations agents appear in the

. 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: :(1) Ez diçim. (I go) :(2) Ez wî dibînim. (I see him.) :(3) Ew diçe. (He goes) :(4) Ew min dibîne. (He sees me.) but: :(5) Ez çûm. (I went) :(6) Min ew dît. (I saw him.) :(7) Ew çû. (He went.) :(8) Wî ez dîtim. (He saw me.) 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. In Dyirbal, pronouns are morphologically nominative–accusative when the agent is first or second person, but ergative when the agent is a third person.

Optional ergativity

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 Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

and

pragmatics In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...

. Unlike

, 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: * The

animacy Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around ...

of the subject, with more ''animate'' subjects more likely to be marked ergative * The

of the verb, with more ''active'' or ''transitive'' verbs more likely to be marked ergative * The grammatical structure or ense-aspect-mood Languages from Australia, New Guinea and Tibet have been shown to have optional ergativity.

Distribution of ergative languages

Prototypical ergative languages are, for the most part, restricted to specific regions of the world:

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

( Kurdish, and some extinct languages), the Caucasus,

the Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.'' Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sin ...

, the

Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or Qingzang Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central Asia, Central, South Asia, South, and East Asia. Geographically, it is located to the north of H ...

, and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and parts of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

. Specific languages and language families include:

Americas

Chibchan languages The Chibchan languages (also known as Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa R ...

* Chinookan languages (extinct) *

Coosan languages Coosan () is a townland and suburb north of Athlone, County Westmeath in Ireland. Coosan, which is situated on the shores of Lough Ree, is surrounded by water on three sides and bordered by Athlone on the fourth. Coosan attracts tourists over t ...

(extinct) *

Eskimo–Aleut languages The Eskaleut ( ), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...

* Guaicuruan languages * Macro-Jê languages * Mayan * Mixe–Zoque *

Panoan languages Panoan (also Pánoan, Panoano, Panoana, Páno) is a family of languages spoken in western Brazil, eastern Peru, and northern Bolivia. It is possibly a branch of a larger Pano–Tacanan family. Genetic relations The Panoan family is generally bel ...

* Salish languages *

Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terrace and ...

Africa

* Tedaga, a

Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributari ...

language of Southern Libya and Northern Chad. * Majang language, a

language of Ethiopia. * Päri, although recent studies imply a nominative-accusative system.

Asia

* Assamese *

Burushaski Burushaski (; , ) is a language isolate, spoken by the Burusho people, who predominantly reside in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. There are also a few hundred speakers of this language in northern Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Jammu ...

* Chukchi (endangered) * Hawu * Tibetan * Sylheti * Yaghnobi *

Australian

* Most

Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

, such as Dyirbal Certain

(e.g., Wangkumara) possess an intransitive case and an

along with an

, and lack an

; such languages are called tripartite languages or ergative–accusative languages.

Papua

* Eastern Trans-Fly languages * various

Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive Language family, family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as Western New Guinea, parts of Indone ...

Europe

Caucasus and Near East

Hurrian The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...

(extinct) * Urartian (extinct) * Sumerian (extinct) * South Caucasian: Georgian, Laz * Northeast Caucasian: Chechen, Lezgian, Tsez, Archi (

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...

) * Northwest Caucasian: Abkhaz, Circassian, Ubykh (extinct) * Kurdish: Gorani, Zazaki,

Sorani Central Kurdish, also known as Sorani Kurdish, is a Kurdish dialect or a language spoken in Iraq, mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan in western Iran. Central Kurdish is one of the ...

and Kurmanji Several scholars have hypothesized that

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

was an ergative language, although this hypothesis is controversial.

Languages with limited ergativity

*In

( Indo-Aryan), ergative alignment occurs only when the verb is in the

for

s (also for intransitive verbs but only when they are volitional). *In

, ergative alignment occurs only in the past tense. *In Georgian, ergativity only occurs in the

. *The

Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...

(e.g., Tagalog) are sometimes considered ergative (Schachter 1976, 1977; Kroeger 1993); however, they have also been considered to have their own unique morphosyntactic alignment. See symmetrical voice. *In the Neo-Aramaic languages, which are generally classified into 4 groups, only Northeastern (NENA) and Ṭuroyo groups exhibit

, which is formed in the

aspect only, whereas the

imperfective The imperfective (abbreviated , , or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a ...

aspect is nominative-accusative. Some dialects would only mark unaccusative subjects as ergative. Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, in particular, has an ergative type of construction of the perfective past verbal base, where foregone actions are verbalized by a passive construction with the

patient A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by Health professional, healthcare professionals. The patient is most often Disease, ill or Major trauma, injured and in need of therapy, treatment by a physician, nurse, op ...

being conferred as the grammatical subject rather than by an active construction, e.g. ''baxta qtile'' ("the woman was killed by him"). The ergative type of inflection with an agentive phrase has been extended by analogy to intransitive verbs, e.g. ''qim-le'' ("he has risen").

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

has historically been a nominative-accusative language.

Sign languages

Sign languages (for example, Nepali Sign Language) should also generally be considered ergative in the patterning of actant incorporation in verbs. In

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with #Non-manual elements, no ...

s that have been studied,

classifier handshape Classifier may refer to: *Classifier (linguistics), or ''measure word'', especially in East Asian languages **Classifier handshape, in sign languages *Classifier (UML), in software engineering *Classification rule, in statistical classification, e. ...

s are incorporated into verbs, indicating the subject of

s when incorporated, and the

s. (If we follow the " semantic phonology" model proposed by William Stokoe (1991)William Stokoe (1991) Semantic Phonology. Sign Language Studies, 71 ,107–114. this ergative-absolutive 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 Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often been used in deaf ...

handshape च /ca/ (standing for the first letter of the Nepali word TEA चिया /chiya:/) being incorporated as the

Approximations of ergativity in English

English has derivational morphology that parallels ergativity in that it operates on intransitive verbs and objects of transitive verbs. With certain intransitive verbs, adding the suffix "-ee" to the verb produces a label for the person performing the action: :"John has retired" → "John is a retiree" :"John has escaped" → "John is an escapee" However, with a transitive verb, adding "-ee" does not produce a label for the person doing the action. Instead, it gives us a label for the person to whom the action is done: :"Susie employs Mike" → "Mike is an employee" :"Mike has appointed Susie" → "Susie is an appointee" Etymologically, the sense in which "-ee" denotes the object of a transitive verb is the original one, arising from French

past participle In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adject ...

s in "-é". This is still the prevalent sense in

British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...

: the intransitive uses are all 19th-century American coinages and all except "escapee" are still marked as "chiefly U.S." by the ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

''. English also has a number of so-called

ergative verb In general linguistics, a labile verb (or ergative / diffused / ambivalent verb) is a verb that undergoes causative alternation; that is, it can be used both transitively and intransitively, with the requirement that the direct object of its t ...

s, where 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 choice depends on the type and length of the noun: pronouns and short nouns are typically marked with the possessive, while long and complex NPs are marked with "of"). The underlying subject of a transitive is marked differently (typically with "by" as in a passive construction): :"(a dentist) extracts a tooth" → "the extraction of a tooth (by a dentist)" :"(I/The editor) revised the essay" → "(my/the editor's) revision of the essay" :"(I was surprised that) the water boiled" → "(I was surprised at) the boiling of the water" :"I departed on time (so I could catch the plane)" → "My timely departure (allowed me to catch the plane)"

Notes

References

Bibliography

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External links

"A quick tutorial on ergativity, by way of the Squid-headed one"
at Recycled Knowledge (blog), by John Cowan, 2005-05-05. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ergative-absolutive language Language Linguistic typology