I’m not a bonafide linguist, but I’ve studied a dozen languages—some formally, some informally, some only on a surface level, some deep enough that I’ve needed to dip my toes into proper linguistics to go further. While I’m sure the iceberg goes deeper than I’ll ever know, the one topic I still haven’t gotten even a basic grasp on is ergativity, which is wild because *apparently* it’s a main feature of many languages. I would say I get the gist of it, but that’s not even true. At best, I know which parts of speech it involves, and I won’t even say that out loud because I may well be wrong.
So, my basic question is: What is ergativity?
From there:
– What are some examples of it in different languages?
– And what is its linguistic counterpart called, as in, if a language does not display ergativity, what *does* it have?
You don’t have to explain it like I’m five, more like I’m that guy at work who’s approaching retirement age that saw you scroll TikTok once and now wants you to explain what “griddying” is. I’m 27, but I think that method might be best.
Thanks!
In: 13
I have no clue what “griddying” is but the antonym of “ergative” is “accusative.”
Notice how English does this
> The ceremony started.
> We started the ceremony.
Both sentences are talking about the same of event but “ceremony” changes position, into a special “must go after verb” slot. This is an accusative pattern.
> accusative => transitive verbs have objects
The object of a verb is the thing that is changed (“boil water”) or is the focus of an activity (“see a movie”).
Accusative syntax is very common but it’s not the only pattern that makes sense. There are actually several other patterns that are possible, but ergative is the easiest to understand. It looks like this.
> The ceremony started.
> The ceremony started ek us.
“The ceremony” gets to stay in the subject position – actually seems pretty logical to me.
But that means the *doer* (*agent*) gets some kind of special marking. In this example I’ve invented a preposition, “ek,” but this marking is more often a suffix or a change that appears on the verb. It’s different from a subject form. (Notice “ek us” not “we”)
This is definitely a contrived example. In real languages ergativity is combined with other features that aren’t like English (head-marking is a big one) so there are multiple new kinds of grammar to wrap your head around at once.
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