ergative
With the subject of a transitive construction having grammatical cases or thematic…With the subject of a transitive construction having grammatical cases or thematic relations different from those of an intransitive construction.
Recorded UK: Speaker: Vealhurl Recorder: Vealhurl, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
» Basque is an ergative language.
teto · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
1 senses(not comparable)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.
ergativ, ergativisch
Examples
4 sentencesBasque is an ergative language.
In Basque, the active subject should have an ergative case marker.
There are many ergative languages in the world and Basque is one of them.
There are many ergative languages in the world, and Basque is one of them.
Translations
6 languagesBy meaning 1
Origin
From Ancient Greek ἐργᾰ́της (ergắtēs, “labourer, worker”) + English -ive (suffix meaning ‘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).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.