Ergativity
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Ergativity
Author: Robert M. W. Dixon
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: 1994-06-02
Although there is only one ergative language in Europe (Basque), perhaps one-quarter of the world's languages show ergative properties, and pose considerable difficulties for many current linguistic theories. R. M. W. Dixon here provides a full survey of the various types of ergativity, looking at the ways they interrelate, their semantic bases and their role in the organisation of discourse. Ergativity stems from R. M. W. Dixon's long-standing interest in the topic, and in particular from his seminal 1979 paper in Language. It includes a rich collection of data from a large number of the world's languages. Comprehensive, clear and insightful, it will be the standard point of reference for all those interested in the topic.
Ergativity and causativity
Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Freiburg (English Department), course: The Syntax and Semantics of the English Verb Phrase, language: English, abstract: The term ‘ergativity’ is used to describe a grammatical pattern in which there is a formal parallel between the object of a transitive clause and the subject of an intransitive clause. The subject of the transitive clause, however, is treated differently. Dixon, in his standard survey of ergativity, uses the following symbols for these three elements: S = intransitive subject, A = transitive subject, and O = transitive object (1994:6). Initially, the term ‘ergativity’ was only associated with case marking on constituents of a noun phrase. Manning summarises this as folllows: “The more patient-like argument of a transitive verb appears in the same absolutive case as the single argument of an intransitive verb, while the more agent-like argument of a transitive verb is marked differently, in what is known as the ergative case” (1996 : 3). Thus, ergativity is the counterpiece to accusativity, where one case is employed for the intransitive (S) and the transitive subject (A) (nominative) and another case marks the transitive object (O) (accusative). The term ‘ergativity’ derives from the Greek words ergon ‘work, deed’ and ergátēs ‘doer (of an action)’ (Bussmann 1996 : 151) and thus relates to the active – the “more agent-like” – member of the pair involved in a transitive structure. Dixon states that the first use of this term was in 1912 in a study on the Dagestanian language Rutul (1994 : 3).
Deconstructing Ergativity
Author: Maria Polinsky
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2016-04-12
Building upon theoretical innovations and extensive empirical findings, this book explains variation in the syntactic behavior of ergative arguments across languages. It offers a new analysis of ergativity by recognizing two distinct types, PP-ergative- and DP-ergative-languages. Each type is characterized by a set of correlated features which result in structural consistency.
