All Questions
Tagged with ergativity terminology
5 questions
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When and by whom was the term absolutive (case) created?
While the question on the origin of the ergative case (When and by whom were the terms 'ergative case' and 'absolutive case' coined?) is answered, the origins of the terminus ...
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What's the difference between nominative and absolutive case?
Why do both these cases need to exist?
They are both subjects
user31190
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What motivated the terms 'ergative' and 'absolutive'?
Source: p 195, Understanding Syntax (4 ed, 2014) by Prof. Maggie Tallerman PhD in Linguistics (U. Hull)
ERGATIVE is the case of A – the subject of transitive verbs. ABSOLUTIVE is the case of both ...
user5306
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Accusative vs Ergative
In terms of syntactic structure, from the below grammar can we conclude that English is accusative language, not ergative.
S --> NP VP
VPtv --> Vtv NP
VPiv --> Viv
By intuition, I ...
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Why do people use the term "ergative language"?
From what I've read, a lot of languages that have nominative-accusative marking have only this type of marking. However, languages that have ergative-absolutive marking in some contexts typically ...
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