noun
Meaning 1
The property of a grammar's (or, by extension, a language's) being ergative; the attribute of possessing a grammatical pattern such that the object of a transitive verb is treated the same way as the subject of an intransitive one, while the subject of the transitive verb is treated differently.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: uncountable
Topics: human-sciences, linguistics, sciences
Examples
- 2000, Javier Rivas, Ergativity and Transitive Gradients in the Accusative and Infinitive Construction, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Imprenta Universitaría, page 153, Apart from the types of split ergativity-accusativity dealt with in the previous section, there are languages which show degrees of ergativity in their morphology and also —although less frequently— in their syntax, [...] . Actually, Dixon (1994: 172) claims that syntactic ergativity is much stranger cross-linguistically than some degree of morphological ergativity. [...] There are many languages in the world which show some degree of ergativity.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided