What is morphological Ergativity?
Essentially, morphological ergativity is when there is a morphological case distinction between ergative and absolutive, like the Latin morphological distinction betwen nominative and accusative. Syntactic ergativity is when syntactic processes are sensitive to the ergative- absolutive distinction.
What is Ergativity in linguistics?
Introduction. Ergativity refers to a system of marking grammatical relations in which intransitive subjects pattern together with transitive objects (“absolutive”), and differently from transitive subjects (“ergatives”).
What is syntactic Ergativity?
This chapter presents the phenomenon of syntactic ergativity (SE), defined as the grouping of the absolutive subject and absolutive object into a natural class, to the exclusion of the ergative argument, with respect to A′-movement.
What is Ergative Absolutive case?
In linguistic typology, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the single argument (“subject”) of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb.
What is the Absolutive case linguistics?
In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ABS) 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–accusative languages such as English.
What is alignment linguistics?
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 intransitive verbs like the cat ran away.
What is the difference between nominative accusative and ergative absolutive?
When there’s only one noun, is it marked like a subject, or like an object? If it’s marked like a subject, you have a nominative-accusative language. If it’s marked like an object, you have an ergative-absolutive language.
What is the difference between nominative-accusative and ergative absolutive?
Where do you find absolutive case marking?
In languages with ergative–absolutive alignment, the absolutive is the case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb in addition to being used for the citation form of a noun. It contrasts with the marked ergative case, which marks the subject of a transitive verb.
What is an absolutive pronoun?
Absolute possessive pronouns are called such because they can stand alone and they do not modify (or replace) nouns. Absolute possessive pronouns stand apart and do not come before the words they modify (like possessive pronouns). Possessive pronouns function as adjectives in that they modify nouns to show possession.
What is morphosyntactic structure?
According to Crystal (1980: 234) morphosyntactic is a term in linguistics used to refer to grammatical categories or properties for whose definition criteria of morphology and syntax both apply, as in describing the characteristics of words.
What are morphosyntactic forms?
In syntax, a word form’s morphosyntactic properties identify the grammatical characteristics that it possesses, either inherently or as an effect of its syntactic context; these properties determine the particular syntactic relations in which the word form may participate within a sentence.