Ergative case

The ergative is the case of the A-argument in transitive clauses if the sole argument in intransitive clauses is assigned the same case as the P-Argument in transitive clauses.

Synonyms

Before the use of ergative in the mid 20th century, other terms were used:

• German: Nominativ des Handelns (Baskisch, Humboldt 1817:316, quoted in Vollmann n.d.)
• Nominativ agentis (Kâte, Pilhofer 1933:§122)
• Narrative (in early literature about Caucasian languages)
• relative case (in Eskimo linguistics)

Origin

The term ergative first became widespread in the description of Caucasian languages, following Dirr (1928) (see Seely 1977). Dirr picked the term up from Trombetti (1903:173), and Trombetti in turn took it from Schmidt (1902). Schmidt seems to have taken it from Ray & Haddon (1893) (see Manaster-Ramer 1994 for discussion).

References

• Dirr. Adolf. 1928. Einführung in die kaukasischen Sprachen.
• Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1817. Berichtigungen und Zusätze zum ersten Abschnitte des zweyten Bandes des Mithridates über die cantabrische oder baskische Sprache. Berlin: Voss.
• Manaster-Ramer, Alexis. 1994. "The origin of the term “ergative”." Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 47.3: 211-214.
• Pilhofer, Georg. 1933. Grammatik der Kâte-Sprache in Neuguinea. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Eingeborenensprachen 14 (Editor: Meinhof, Carl)
• Ray, Sidney H. & Haddon, Alfred C. 1893. A study of the languages of Torrres Straits with vocabularies and grammatical notes. Part II. Royal Irish Academy – Proceedings ser. 3, v. 4, 119-373.
• Schmidt, P.W. 1902. Doe sprachlichen Verhältnisse von Deutsch-Neuguinea. In: Zeitschrift für afrikanische, ozeanische und oastasiatische Sprachen 6:1-99.
• Seely, Jonathan. 1977. An ergative historiography. Historiographia Linguistica 4:191-206.
• Trombetti, Alfredo. 1903. Delle relazioni delle lingue caucasiche. Part II. In: Giornale della Società asiatica italiana 16:145-175.
• Vollmann, Ralf. n.d. Wilhelm von Humboldts Kasuskonzeption in seinen Arbeiten zum Baskischen.

Other languages

• German Ergativ
• Swedish ergativ (sv)
• Spanish ergativo