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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 ergative-absolutive alignment is in contrast to nominative–accusative alignment, which is observed in English and most other Indo-European languages, where the single argument of an intransitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She walks") behaves grammatically like the agent of a transitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She finds it") but ...
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."
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.
Subjects of unaccusative verbs bear a theta role that is common to objects, which leads to the hypothesis that in the d-structure the Determiner Phrase subject occupies the object position in the syntactic tree. The following is a theta grid for the Ergative verb fall, which has the argument structure V[DP___]: Fall
The term ergative is used in grammar in three different meanings: Ergative case , the grammatical case of the subject of a transitive verb in an ergative-absolutive language Ergative–absolutive language , a language in which the subject of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb
Ergative–absolutive languages can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the O and promoting the A to an S, thus taking the absolutive case, called the antipassive voice. About a sixth of the world's languages have ergative alignment. The best known are probably the Inuit languages and Basque.
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]