Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or relating to a linguistic form or construction that indicates an agent or agency, as the suffix -er in singer.
- n. An agentive form or construction.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In grammar, noting the case which expresses the subject of the transitive verb in languages in which its form differs from that expressing the subject of the intransitive verb. This case is found in many American languages, for instance, in Eskimo. Also called subjective.
Wiktionary
Examples
“Later von Wright was to draw attention to what may be called the agentive modes: ˜the agent brings it about that™, ˜the agent makes it true that™, and the like (von Wright 1963).”
“I suspect that if one wanted to say "A gift was given by Aranth to Uni," it would simply be translated as Fler turce Arnθ Unial where the "agentive" function is taken up by a combination of the nomino-accusative case and marked word order.”
“Further, the use of this case with human beings to mark the "agentive" or "by" seems more in line with an ablative function.”
“Theoretically minä was already serving in part as an "agentive" in the earliest Uralic stage, and then came to mark the subject as a whole once Proto-Samoyedic started seperating from Proto-Uralic.”
“The reports were identical except in the last sentence where one used the agentive phrase "ripped the costume" while the other said "the costume ripped.”
“The genitive is NOT used as an agentive, despite unfortunately being claimed by many without clear proof.”
“Of course "agentive/instrumental" function is also often claimed for the Locative and Dative by different "specialists" so who knows if that is even real.”
“First, tlamatini is not an adjective but an agentive noun.”
“The film-makers betray no understanding of how people actually learn, the active and agentive participation of students in the learning process.”
“So if this word for "father" were coined, say, in the middle of the Late Period from the verb *peh₂- plus the agentive *-tér- and literally meaning 'protector, provider', then *ph₂tér- would be the result with zerograde present in the word from the beginning.”
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