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The identification of unaccusative verbs in English is therefore based on other criteria, notably: Many unaccusative verbs alternate with a corresponding transitive verb, where the unaccusative subject appears in direct object position. The ice melted. ≈ The sun melted the ice. The window broke. ≈ The golf ball broke the window.
The animacy of the subject, with more animate subjects more likely to be marked ergative; The semantics of the verb, with more active or transitive verbs more likely to be marked ergative; The grammatical structure or [tense-aspect-mood] Languages from Australia, New Guinea and Tibet have been shown to have optional ergativity. [11]
In general linguistics, a labile verb (or ergative verb) is a verb that undergoes causative alternation; that is, it can be used both transitively and intransitively, with the requirement that the direct object of its transitive use corresponds to the subject of its intransitive use, [1] as in "I ring the bell" and "The bell rings."
Nominative–accusative (or simply accusative): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is in the same case as the agent (subject) of a transitive verb; this case is then called the nominative case, with the patient (direct object) of a transitive verb being in the accusative case. Ergative–absolutive (or simply ergative): The argument ...
Some languages treat unergative verbs differently from other intransitives in morphosyntactic terms. For example, in some Romance languages, such verbs use different auxiliaries when in compound tenses. Besides the above, unergative verbs differ from unaccusative verbs in that in some languages, they can occasionally use the passive voice.
Also, a different form (the ergative) would be used for "Jane" in the first sentence. For example, in the following Inuktitut sentences, the subject 'the woman' is in ergative case ( arnaup ) when occurring with a transitive verb, while the object 'the apple' ( aapu ) is in absolutive case.
The final ke 4 𒆤 is the composite of -k (genitive case) and -e (ergative case). [1] In grammar, the ergative case (abbreviated erg) is the grammatical case that identifies a nominal phrase [2] as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages. [3]
Often there is a semantic difference between the intransitive and transitive forms of a verb: the water is boiling versus I boiled the water; the grapes grew versus I grew the grapes. In these examples, known as ergative verbs, the role of the subject differs between intransitive and transitive verbs.