Word.ws English Dictionary

ergative

Syllables: er·gat·ive/ˈɜːɡətɪv/US/ˈɝɡətɪv/

ergative adjective: with the subject of a transitive construction having grammatical cases or thematic relations different from those of an intransitive construction. Also the ellipsis of ergative case.

Adjective

ergative (not comparable)

  1. With the subject of a transitive construction having grammatical cases or thematic relations different from those of an intransitive construction.
    • The case systems of ergative languages are counter-intuitive to speakers of many Indo-European languages.
    • The most common situation is for nouns to inflect according to a nominative-ergative pattern, while pronouns at least superficially follow a nominative-accusative pattern. That is, nouns have a single case (nominative) marking intransitive subject and transitive object functions, and another case...1972, R[obert] M[alcolm] W[ard] Dixon, “Australian Languages”, in The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics; 9), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, →ISBN...
    Synonyms:
    elliptical
    Antonyms:
    unergative

Noun

ergative (plural ergatives)

  1. An ergative verb or other expression.
    • Unlike those with subjectivized ergatives, such locative clauses naturally do not allow for imperatives (*Contain the apples).1971, John M[athieson] Anderson, “Locative”, in The Grammar of Case: Towards a Localistic Theory (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics; 4), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press...
    • Woodbury (1975) does argue, however, that absolutives are more relativisable in Greenlandic than are ergatives, on the grounds that (1) RCs [Relative Clauses] formed on ergatives are somewhat more restricted in the distribution in matrix clauses (p. 21) than are those formed on absolutives, and (2)...1987, Edward L. Keenan, Bernard Comrie, “Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar”, in Edward L. Keenan, Universal Grammar: 15 Essays (Croom Helm Linguistics Series), Beckenham, Kent; North...

Also used as

ergative is also the ellipsis of ergative case.

ergative meaning in Indonesian

ergative in Indonesian

with the subjects of transitive constructions having grammatical cases or thematic relations different from those of from intransitive constructions
ergativus

Examples of ergative in a sentence

  • The most common situation is for nouns to inflect according to a nominative-ergative pattern, while pronouns at least superficially follow a nominative-accusative pattern.1972, R[obert] M[alcolm] W[ard] Dixon, “Australian Languages”, in The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland (Cambridge Studies in...
  • For Podopa, the actor of most transitive verbs (and of some intransitive verbs as well) may occur with or without the ergative case suffix, but with a semantic difference.1986, William A[uguste] Foley, “Nominals”, in The Papuan Languages of New Guinea (Cambridge Language Surveys), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire...
  • The ergative case marks the agent of a transitive verb.1987, George van Driem, “Nominal Morphology”, in A Grammar of Limbu (Mouton Grammar Library; 4), Berlin; New York, N.Y.: Mouton de Gruyter...
  • In Section 1 I will discuss the existence of a class of ergative adjectives in Dutch[…].2000, Hans Bennis, “Adjectives and Argument Structure”, in Peter Coopmans, Martin Everaert, Jane Grimshaw, editors, Lexical Specification...

Synonyms of ergative

Antonyms

Forms of ergative

pluralergatives

Origin of ergative

From Ancient Greek ἐργᾰ́της (ergắtēs, “labourer, worker”) + English -ive (suffix meaning ‘belong or relating to; of the nature of; serving to; tending to’ forming adjectives).

Words formed from ergative

Phrases with ergative

Questions about ergative

What does ergative mean?
Ergative means with the subject of a transitive construction having grammatical cases or thematic relations different from those of an intransitive construction.
What is ergative in Indonesian?
Ergative in Indonesian is ergativus. See Ergative meaning in Indonesian.
How do you use ergative in a sentence?
The most common situation is for nouns to inflect according to a nominative-ergative pattern, while pronouns at least superficially follow a nominative-accusative pattern.
What part of speech is ergative?
Ergative can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce ergative?
Ergative is pronounced /ˈɜːɡətɪv/ (UK).

Words near ergative in the dictionary

  1. ergataner
  2. ergataners
  3. ergate
  4. ergates
  5. ergatival
  6. ergative
  7. ergative case
  8. ergative cases
  9. ergative verb
  10. ergative verbs
  11. ergative-absolutive

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ergative (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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