Re: What is ergative?

En réponse à Christopher B Wright <faceloran@...>:

> First off, I want to say that you're all making me feel stupid. That's
> something which is wrong with me; that is, I'm actually ignorant.
>
> More importantly, I'd like to know what nominative/ergative languages
> are. It seemed to me as if they use semantic purpose as grammatical
> function; that is, whatever is doing the action in the meaning is the
> subject of the sentence, no matter whether the subject is the
> emphasized
> part of the sentence. Am I correct? (Probably not, but even a hog with
> no
> nose can find a truffle once in a while.)
>
Well, let's begin with the beginning: nominative (or better accusative) and
ergative refer to syntactic functions, not semantic (semantically, you talk of
agent, patient, experiencer, etc...). They are ways to classify languages
according to the way it treats three functions:
- S: the subject of an intransitive sentence. A S is typically the subject of a
sentence like "he runs into the house" or "he is very smart".
- O: the object of a transitive sentence. An O is typically the direct object
of a sentence like "I see this man in the corner" or "I give a candy to the
little girl".
- A: the subject of a transitive sentence. An A is typically the subject of a
sentence like "The baby takes the teddy bear in its arms" or "I shot him dead".

Once you have identified those three syntactic functions, you can look at the
way languages handle them:
- There are languages which treat S and A the same way, and give a different
treatment to O. Those are called nominative/accusative (or for short
accusative) languages. This treatment can be done by case (nominative for S and
A, accusative for O, like in Latin), word order (English puts S and A in front
of the verb, but O after it, except in questions) or other media like for
instance verbal agreement (here again, English does that: the -s put on verbs
agrees with the S of an intransitive sentence "he goes" or the A of a
transitive sentence "he kills you").
- There are other languages, quite exotic-looking for English speakers, that
treat S and O the same way, and treat A separately. Those are called
ergative/absolutive (or for short ergative) languages. Languages like that
which use case (like Basque) mark the subject of an intransitive person with
the same case as the object of a transitive sentence (called absolutive), while
they mark the subject of a transitive sentence with a special case (called
ergative). Others will use agreement on the verb, and in this case the same
marks will be used for agreement with the subject for an intransitive sentence,
and with the object for a transitive sentence. The subject of a transitive
sentence will trigger other agreement marks, if any.
- And finally there are those languages which treat differently all three
functions S, O and A. Those rare languages are called active.

Of course, like all simple explanations, this is actually over-simplified. Some
languages will switch from ergative to nominative marking (and vice-versa) for
different reasons. It can be:
- animacy of the subject (with generally a scale, going from the pronoun I to
the abstract ideas, passing by third person pronouns, animals, objects, etc...),
- will of the subject (does the subject do the action willingly, or just
experiences it),
- tense and/or aspect (Georgian IIRC uses ergative marking with past sentences
but accusative marking with present sentences),
- the weather? :)) (just to say that the number of reasons to switch marking
system is quite large :)) )

There are also those languages which can mark S like A *or* like O, depending
on the same kind of criteria. Those are called Split-S languages (when one
intransitive verb asks for a single marking) or Fluid-S languages (when all
intransitive verbs can have S marked as A or as O depending on criteria like
animacy or willingness of the S).

Those two kinds of languages are also called active. But if you find my
explanations for them unclear (at least I do :)) ), just overlook them, and
just remember the first explanations. They are largely enough for a beginner.
With time, you'll learn about the subtilities :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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