Objective Conjugation

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Objective Conjugation

 

a principle of verbal inflection, according to which a verb form indicates not one but several (two to four) individuals, all participants in the action (a subject and its objects). Objective conjugation is characteristic of languages of the ergative type. A special kind of objective conjugation, widespread in other types of languages as well, is a two-part conjugation with prefixes or both prefixes and suffixes. An example is seen in the Kabardin u-e-s-tashch (“you to him I gave”), where u- is the affix for the second person, e- for the third, and s- for the first.

G. A. KLIMOV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive ?
There are two verb inflectional categories: the subjective conjugation and objective conjugation. The subjective conjugation expresses only the number (Sg/Du/Pl) and person (1./2./3.) of the subject:
The objective conjugation expresses also the number of the object (Sg/Du/Pl):
Objective conjugation appears in all the Ugric languages and also in some other Uralic languages.
According to Skribnik, the usage of the objective conjugation, the passive and the dative shift (for dative shift, see Section 6.1) in Northern Mansi has a pragmatic motivation and is a part of information structure marking (Skribnik 2001 : 222).
According to my data, PO/SO construction is used whenever the Recipient represents secondary topic, and due to the topicality of the direct object it is always supported by the objective conjugation. The Recipient is often referred to using zero-anaphora.
The predicate verb is inflected in subjective or objective conjugation, depending on the nature of the direct object.
Also this construction is often (but not always) supported by objective conjugation.
Variation in three-participant constructions in Eastern Mansi

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