Ergative Verbs and some discussion about them

Question

I know what ergative verb is -

Consider the following sentences -

1. I opened the door.

2. The door was opened (by me).

3. The door opened.

The verb open is a transitive verb in sentence #1, and sentence #1 is in active voice. The doer here is I, and what is affected by my action is door

Sentence #2 is in passive voice.

Sentence #3 is in middle voice. The verb open is used as intransitive way. And here the doer of the action (verb) is not important and is not mentioned. What is affected is the subject - door. So here the verb - open - is used in ergative form.

Consider sentence #1 and sentence #3. The object of the transitive verb in sentence #1 is the subject of the intransitive verb in sentence #3.

But all intransitive verbs can't be used in ergative form, nor all ergative verb can take everything as subject. For example -

He fired a gun.

The gun fired.

He fired a bullet.

A bullet fired (we can't use "bullet" as the subject of this ergative verb) - Incorrect sentence

MY QUESTION -

1. All ergative verbs are transitive verb in nature. But when they are used in ergative form they acts as intransitive. Am I right?

2. How to decide which verb can be used in ergative form and which verb can not? Is there any technique - logical or grammatical or anything else?

3. How to decide which subjects are appropriate for a particular ergative verb, and which are not?

Answer 1

I do not have the linguistic competence of the users who commented the question. So I only took the question as asked, and looked also at wikipedia,

And the concept, as presented, looks very arbitrary to me.

Here are examples involving the verbs open and float.

1.a: The door opened,

1.b: He opened the door to a small garden,

2.a: The trunk floated,

2.b: He floated the trunks down the river,

2.c: The man floated near his capsized boat.

According to the analysis of a previous question, case 1.a is an ergative use of the verb open, used transitively in 1.b. But then the sentences 2.a and 2.b should be analyzed in the same way, which implies that 2.a is an ergative use of the verb float. But then, sentence 2.c should also be ergative. Is that the case?

And then, in successive variations, what of:

The man stood near his boat

The man walked near his boat

The dog walked near his boat

The man walked his dog near his boat

About question 1:

Wikipedia's answer is:

In linguistics, an ergative verb is a verb that can be either transitive or intransitive, and whose subject when intransitive corresponds to its direct object when transitive.

This seems to be illustrated by the question examples. But if you look at the second example:

He fired a gun.

You can also say:

The gun fired a bullet.

and that is transitive.

But what if the verb shoot is used.

He shot the gun

He shot a man

The gun shot a bullet

The gun shot a man

Though I am not sure one would say intransitively

The gun shot

So it all seems a bit more complicated that the simple rule of Wikipedia and your first question,

Answer 2

"The door opened"

One could derive this from "The door opened itself" with drop of "itself".

Of course, one can explain this with the linguistic term ergative. But the traditional grammar has no problem to explain such verb use with traditional terms (reflexive with drop of the ref. pronoun).

Answer 3

In order to understand what is meant by 'ergative verb' in English, it may be important to understand the concept of ergativity in the first place. Ergative (or ergative case) generally refers to the marking of agent in transitive constructions while the agent in in-transitive constructions is not marked or is marked in the same way as the patient of a transitive construction (this is called absolutive). Languages where the ergative construction dominates are called 'ergative languages' (although there are no pure languages and there is great variation in the alignment of intransitive Subject, transitive Subject [called Agent] and Object [sometimes called Patient] across languages).

This is in contrast to the accusative languages where the dominant way of marking the X Yed Z construction is like in the English: 'She killed him.' (Xnom Yed Zacc).

In this context, it makes no sense to talk about ergative verbs. Just ergative constructions or ergative case marking on the Agent (and/or absolutive on the Patient).

The ergative verb in English refers to verbs that are normally transitive but that can be used without specifying the object because the object is also the subject.

So compare the verb open when use as in

1. John opened the window. / John baked the cake.
2. John opened for Mary. / John baked all morning.
3. The window opened. / The cake baked in 20 minutes.
4. ?The windows opened itself. / ?The caked baked itself.

Only the examples in 3 are ergative because the unexpressed object (patient) and subject (agent) are the same.

An easy test of this is whether the sentence can be passivised with the indirect object marking the agent.

1. The window was opened by John.
2. (The door/it/something) was opened by John for Mary.
3. *The window was opened. / *The window opened by John.
4. The window was opened by itself. (in some sort of cartoon universe)

To answer your questions directly:

1. All English ergative verbs are transitive (although some may also have intransitive variants). Ergativity is about expressions of transitivity.

2. The decision on whether a verb can be used as ergative is largely semantic. Can the agent and the patient be the same and are they both expressed in the subject position? So for example, 'cut' or 'kicked' cannot be ergative because if you take away the subject you end up with either an ellipsis or an intransitive verb. E.g. The knife cut deep. or The mule kicks. You could imagine some metaphorical meanings to include ergativity such as 'The engine kicked into gear.' But it's not clear in this case.

3. The decision about the subject is also semantic. Can the subject be an agent and patient at the same time? Contrast: 'Mary baked in the kitchen all afternoon.' vs. 'Mary baked in the sun all afternoon.' The first is intransitive use of bake and the second is ergative.