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ergativity

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ergativity

Tendency of a language to pair the subject, or agent, of an intransitive verb with the object, or patient, of a transitive verb. This contrasts with the situation in nominative-accusative languages such as Latin or English, in which the subjects of both transitive and intransitive verbs are paired grammatically and distinguished from the object of a transitive verb. Languages or language families that display ergativity to varying degrees include Sumerian, Caucasian languages, Eskimo-Aleut, Maya, Australian Aboriginal languages, and many American Indian languages.



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Therefore here only cases of morphologically marked ergativity will be discussed.
The ergative constructions exhibit a pattern of split ergativity based on a person hierarchy.
Alexander 1995 Problems of definiteness and ergativity in Embaloh.
 
 
 
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