Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or relating to a language, such as Georgian, in which the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb is expressed by one grammatical case, and the subject of a transitive verb is expressed by another.
- adj. Of or relating to the grammatical case of the subject of a transitive verb in such a language.
- n. The ergative case.
- n. An ergative inflection.
- n. A nominal having an ergative form.
Wiktionary
- adj. grammar Used of various situations where the subject of transitive constructions have different grammatical cases or thematic relations to those of intransitive constructions.
- n. linguistics the ergative case
- n. linguistics an ergative verb or other expression
Etymologies
- From the Ancient Greek ἐργάτης (ergatēs, "worker"), from ἔργον (ergon, "work"). (Wiktionary)
- From Greek ergatēs, worker, from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The 'ergative' marking patterns of Proto-Indo-European therefore do not fit the noun hierarchy as proposed by Silverstein 1976 and therefore no longer support the traditional ergative hypothesis for Proto-Indo-European.”
“These languages are rare and, for the most part, not well-studied, and my understanding is that the analysis of them as having deep ergative is controversial...which brings up the main point of the post again.”
“But there is another common language type in the world called ergative-absolutive.”
“The view that PIE case endings, nominative *-s and genitive *-ós, are somehow related by a magical ablaut and stemming from an ergative case came about from the fact that, based on the wealth of data from world languages that we now have, nominative cases which mark the subject of a sentence are supposed to be unmarked cases.”
“Wait a moment, my idea is that pre-PIE or whatever name you want to use, even "Indo-Aegean" was an ergative language which used an ergative marker *-sV related to the Hurro-Urartian one.”
“The similarity with the HU ergative is an argument in favour of this theory.”
“Paleoglot: Nipping the PIE ergative *-s theory right in the bud skip to main”
“Nipping the PIE ergative *-s theory right in the b...”
“Octavià: "Wait a moment, my idea is that pre-PIE ... was an ergative language which used an ergative marker *-sV related to the Hurro-Urartian one.”
“The ergative theory seemed to help solve this problem for some since it provided a specific pathway for this unusual marking to develop.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ergative’.
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phrontistery - e
from phrontistery.info
ecclesiarchy, ecclesiastry, ecdemomania, echinuliform, echoism, echolalia, echopraxia, eclaircise, ?claircissement, eclat, ?clat, eclegme and 616 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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Adjectival Arcana
A roster of adjectives that infrequently surface in typical conversation and writing. Many are dredged from scientific or other technical jargon or sieved from examples of disused archaic forms.
unitegmic, acaulescent, reticuloendothelial, ingressive, uniate, acanthopterygian, ossific, epiphysial, perivisceral, acœlomatous, cestoid, acælomate and 7756 more...
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Words about words
Most of these describe word patterns or relationships between words.
panvocalic, palindrome, anagram, transposition, antigram, reversal, isogram, alternade, trinade, beheadment, decapitation, apheresis and 149 more...
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a case of cases
evoking a kind of heavy chest of drawers, for me. Latin (and German) at 11; now Finnish, and a fascination for what else is out there.
Entering all these, I did have to struggle not t...nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, vocative, locative, partitive, inessive, elative, illative, adessive and 62 more...
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Verborum
Types of verbs.
accusative, impersonal, control, captative, transitive, inchoative, compound, predicative, unacusative, unergative, monotransitive, light and 16 more...
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working words
erg, ergative, ergometer, energy, ergonomics, exergue, synergism, synergid, liturgy, exoergic, exergonic, urge and 30 more...
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ynaffit's Words
sedulous, vituperative, pullulating, erstwhile, imbroglio, asperity, cynosure, adumbrate, prosopopoeia, peerless, calumny, ague and 272 more...
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Words about Words
glossolalia, logophilia, zeugma, hapax legomenon, hippopotomonstros..., captcha, circumlocution, bouquinist, abecedarian, ergative
Tweets
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