Ergative–absolutive alignment

Ergativity (in Latin erga 'against, near') means in linguistics that the agent-argument (the agent, the "subject") is marked differently (counter-argument) depending on the constellation.

Typically, in a transitive sentence it is in the case ergative, while in an intransitive sentence it has the case absolutive. In an accusative language like German, on the other hand, it has the same case in both cases (nominative; example: Der Mann geht - The man sees the dog). Continuous ergativity is rare (example: Basque); split ergativity is more common. Ergativity raises questions about the generality of the notion of "subject"; however, the languages in question are grammatically inconsistent on closer analysis, so that effects of a category "subject" can be found to varying degrees in such languages.

The term ergative language is ambiguous. In a broader sense, it refers to any language that has the phenomenon of ergativity. These include Greenlandic and other Eskimo languages, Basque, Georgian, Sumerian, Zazaic, Kurmanji, Pashto, Burushaski, Hindi/Urdu, Tibetan and Dyirbal (an Australian language).

In the narrower sense of relational language typology, it designates only some of these languages that are not assigned to any other type. Thus, WALS classifies Greenlandic and Burushaski as ergative languages, Basque and Georgian as active languages, and Hindi as tripartite (ergative-accusative language); more details below.

Morphological ergativity

Ergative languages use the same grammatical case for the subject of an intransitive verb and the patiens of a transitive verb, called the absolutive, which corresponds to the nominative in accusative languages in that it usually remains unmarked. For the agent, i.e. the acting subject, of transitive verbs, a different case is used, namely the ergative.

An example of ergativity in Basque:

Ume-a erori da.

Child-def.abs. sg fall-prf.3sg

"The child fell down."

Emakume-ak gizon-a ikusi du.

Woman-def.erg.sg Man-def.abs.sg see-prf.3sg

"The woman saw the man."

One could also illustrate this system by inventing a variant of German in which there is an ending -u for the absolutive on a noun, and an ending -o for the ergative. Sentences in such "ergative German" would then look like this:

Child-u fell down

and:

Woman-o has seen Kind-u.

Ergative scheme in relation to semantic roles

Regarding the Patiens column: here, "Absolutive" should exclude the ergative-accusative languages and "(Absolutive)" should exclude the active languages.

Ergative construction and nominative-accusative construction compared:

Syntactic ergativity

Some languages that have morphological ergativity also have syntactic ergativity.

In ergative languages without syntactic ergativity - just as in accusative languages - the subject is always the agent of transitive verbs and the only argument of intransitive verbs. In languages with syntactic ergativity, on the other hand, the "subject" is the argument that is in the absolutive, that is, the patiens of transitive verbs and the only argument of intransitive verbs. Mostly, however, syntactic ergativity occurs only in some constructions, in the rest of the language behaves accusative.

Syntactic ergativity becomes visible, for example, in the sentence connection of the subordinate clauses: Ergative languages infer a missing argument in the absolutive. In German, we interpret the sentence "The student saw the teacher and went away" as "The student saw the teacher and the student went away". On the other hand, in ergative languages, the absolutive argument of the first part of the sentence would be taken as the subject of the second, intransitive verb. "The student (ERG) saw the teacher (ABS) and went away" is interpreted as "The student (ERG) saw the teacher (ABS) and the teacher (ABS) went away". A sentence of this type can serve as a test for native speakers of a particular language to find out whether the language in question is syntactically an ergative or an accusative language.

Languages with syntactic ergativity include Archi, Basque, Warlpiri, and Chukchi (optional).

Ergative languages generally do not have passive forms. They do, however, have an antipassive, where the direct object is deleted and the subject changes from the ergative to the absolutive, that is, the verb becomes intransitive.