The ergative structure

What is the transitivity?

Before we begin anything, you need to understand the transitivity.

It is a property that every verb has, here is how it works:

one or several objects → transitive verb

no object → intransitive verb

What is the transitivity?

• transitive verbs (one or several objects):

I study languages, he eats a banana

You write a letter to your friend

• intransitive verbs (no object):

I sleep every afternoon

I will run tonight those are adverbials, not objects

The accusative structure

In European languages, the structure of a sentence is called "accusative". It means that the subject is in nominative case (the basic case of a word) while the direct object is marked with accusative case (and indirect object with dative case).

English and Romance languages lost their cases but Germanic and Slavic languages still have them.

The ergative structure

Well, Tibetan has a completely different structure, it is called "ergative".

Here, the basic case is the absolutive case. It is used not with the subject, but with the patient, the one supporting the action.

The second main case is the ergative case which is used with the agent, the one doing the action.

The ergative structure

In case of a transitive verb, if I say:

"I give him an apple", what word is the patient? And the agent?

Well, the patient is "the apple", supporting the action, it did not ask for it. And the agent is "I".

In fact, the object is not marked (absolutive is the basic case) while the subject is marked (ergative case).

The ergative structure

But in the case of an intransitive verb (to sleep, to lie, to fall, to walk, to die, to go, to run…), the subject is in the absolutive case, just like the object of a transitive verb!

That kind of structure might seem strange because it is very uncommun, but a lot of languages use it beside Tibetan: the Basque language, the Caucasian languages, the Australian Aboriginal languages, the Mayan languages…