Home > Ergative-absolutive language

An ergative-absolutive language (or just ergative language) is one that marks the subject of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.

If the language has morphological case, then the verb arguments are marked thus:

• The subject of a transitive verb is marked with a case conventionally known as "ergative".
• The subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are both marked with a case called "absolutive".

If there's no case marking, the language can resort to word order (for example, the absolutive argument comes before the verb and the ergative argument comes after it). For instance, Abkhaz has no morphological ergative case, but its verbal agreement structure shows that it is definitely ergative.

See morphosyntactic alignment for a more technical explanation and a comparison with nominative-accusative languages.

1 Examples

The only ergative-absolutive European language is Basque. Note the following examples:

Gizona etorri da. "The man has arrived."

Gizonak mutila ikusi du. "The man saw the boy."

In Basque, gizon is "man", mutil is "boy", and a suffixed -a shows the definite form ("the"). You will notice that gizon is different depending on whether it is the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb. The first form is in the absolutive case (marked by a null morpheme) and the second form is in the ergative case (marked by a suffixed -k).

Other languages that employ an ergative-absolutive system are:

• Kurdish, an Indo-European language
• Sāmoan and many other Oceanic languages
• Virtually all Caucasian languages ( Abkhaz, ChechenThe Chechen language is a northern Caucasian language and one of the official languages of Chechnya. Partial mutual intelligebility exists with the Ingush language, and there are intermediary dialects. The number of speakers is estimated to be around 900,, etc.)
• The various InuitInuit (, singular Inuk or Inuq / ) is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples of the Arctic who descended from the Thule. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference defines its constitutency to include Canadian Inuit and Inuvialuit, Gree dialects ( Inuktitut, InupikInupik is one of the two major divisions of the Eskimo languages of the Eskimo-Aleut language group. The other division is Yupik., YupikThe Yupik or, in the Central Alaskan language, Yup'ik are aboriginal people who live along the coast of western Alaska, especially on the Yukon- Kuskokwim delta and along the Kuskokwim River (Central Alaskan Yupik), in southern Alaska (the Alutiiq) and in)
• Many other American languages, such as MayaThe Mayan languages are a family of related languages spoken from South-Eastern Mexico through northern Central America as far south as Honduras. They go back at least some 5000 years in the Pre-Columbian era of Mesoamerica. Although the Spanish language and NavajoNavajo is an Apachean language of the Athapaskan language family, belonging to the Na-Dene phylum. It is like the other Apachean languages in that although the majority of the languages in the Na-Dene family are spoken much farther north ( Alaska, Yukon,