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
In a more basic sense it is quite difficult for us, as English speakers, to understand the difference between ergative and accusative languages as English is an accusative language.
In very short, it’s basically surmising how some languages can take a statement in based on the perspective of the agent and treat it identically when later addressing the agent from another mutual perspective,
Here is an example of how we can write things and the meaning and interpretation can change:
“He killed the waitress” – This is based on the agent perspective, their is no introduction to the character here.
“The waitress was killed” – So in this situation we have restructured the sentence, know she was killed, but we have no context. The sentence makes sense however, which is how the tie on next works..
“The waitress was killed by him” – In this example we have had to actually introduce the man. We have glued “by him” on the end, and in both circumstances with and without the sentence makes sense. This is then why we see it as accusative, as your now accusing.
In other languages however, the structure does not need to change and yet the meaning can change based on the words following.
Different perspectives can be shown within the same structure, the example from the link below:
“man has arrived” – in this example makes sense in our language.
“man boy saw” – in this language, the structure may seem off however the meaning can change based on the writing alone.
I was going to explain it myself in more depth, however I found this thread here is quite useful:
What are the differences between the nominative and ergative cases with regards to nouns? (x-post from ELI5)
by inlinguistics
I could be wrong however, I’m just a researcher.
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