Word.ws English Dictionary

ergative-absolutive

ergative-absolutive adjective: being or relating to a language where the single argument (subject) of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb.

Adjective

ergative-absolutive (not comparable)

  1. Being or relating to a language where the single argument (subject) of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb.

Questions about ergative-absolutive

What does ergative-absolutive mean?
Ergative-absolutive means being or relating to a language where the single argument (subject) of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb.
What part of speech is ergative-absolutive?
Ergative-absolutive is an adjective.

Words near ergative-absolutive in the dictionary

  1. ergative
  2. ergative case
  3. ergative cases
  4. ergative verb
  5. ergative verbs
  6. ergative-absolutive
  7. ergatively
  8. ergativeness
  9. ergatives
  10. ergativity
  11. ergato-

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ergative-absolutive (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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