Meaning of Ergative | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Ellipsis of ergative case (“a grammatical case used to indicate the agent of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages”).
   abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis
2. An ergative verb or other expression.

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

CEFR level