Ergativity: Her Likes She

[@maisaranki6236]

Oh God yes, keep talking dirty to me

[@Artifexian]

Haha! Best comment! I'm pinning this. XD

[@maisaranki6236]

Gee, thanks! But really though, in-depth analysis of relatively rare grammar patters... (o˚̑̑̑̑̑ 3˚̑̑̑̑̑ o )

[@Pingijno]

My brain through the whole video

[@oneofmanyparadoxfans5447]

My oh my...

[@dargondude2375]

cue careless whisper

[@xlabc]

I hope, I will get it after 3rd time watching

[@Artifexian]

It dense, I know... :(

[@keegster7167]

+XL Live I first began to understand ergativity from David Peterson's video and his notes on his website. maybe try that out?

[@languagelover9170]

My god same this topic is hard to understanddddddd I CAN'T! ;-;

[@m.kostoglod7949]

+XL Live О, и ты тут!

[@holdthatlforluigi]

@Alexander He's not marking it with the possessive. He's marking it with the accusative. Think back to one of his first sentences in this video, "she likes her." The word is not acting as a possessive in this example. He does this because "her" (accusative) is the marked form of the 'neutral' "she." In other words, he's showing that the subject and patient/object are 'neutral' in purely ergative-absolutive languages and that the agent is marked.

[@ironsfamily6]

This one was quite complex and I'm going to have to watch it a few times. However, I'm really interested in the Fluid-S system. It has so much potential to say things about a culture. For instance, do emotions require volition? Maybe it could vary by context, or by which emotion is involved. Maybe a culture considers sadness to be involuntary but anger to require volition. Maybe they consider sadness the default state and joy something worked at. There are so many ideas to explore and so many things to say with this system. If I ever get to the point of actually fully building a conlang, this is a system I would love to play with.

[@Artifexian]

It's pretty cool alright.

[@azhadial7396]

+funisfun8 A fluid-S language does not need to use volition, some fluid-S languages make a stative-active distinction (example: "die" is stative and "kill" is the active form of "dying", I think Georgian is like that), and some use it to be formal (and often for other things to), there are endless possibilities!

[@williamnorris6184]

Same

[@catlover0000]

And I like the idea of having two English words being one word in that language, where the meaning is changed by the placement of the noun.

[@hadassahbranch7529]

In Surigaonon, a Philippine lanɡuaɡe, most emotions including anger, are subjected as involuntary. However, to indicate volition, we use reduplication, a key feature of lanɡuaɡes in the Austronesian family. For instance, Nasuko ako, is simply, I am anɡry. Naɡsuko-suko ako, still means that I am anɡry, however it indicates that I am deliberately so. This is parallel to most of the other emotions as well. However, with the interestinɡ case of happiness, from nalipay to naɡlipay-lipay, the deliberate hapiness connotes that one is ecstatic or makinɡ the most of their lives.

[@shaihulud3140]

3:25 "Arrived did Luke; saw did Yoda." Now you’re speaking like a Jedi Master.

[@HeadCannon19]

@Some Kind of Master His order is actually sort of like (V)OSV. If there's an action verb, then you put that at the start, then Object, Subject, and finish with a helping verb (if there is no helping verb, you have to add one). Something like "Use(AV) the force(Obj), Luke(Sub) did(HV)." If you're using a linking verb, that goes at the end of the sentence and you use OSV. Something like "Happy(Obj), Luke(Sub) is(LV)." His rule for where each verb goes is not unlike English questions, which also split up its verb phrases in a similar way by putting helping verbs at the start but keeping action verbs in their normal place ("Did(HV) you(Sub) do(AV) that(obj)?"), but Linking Verb sentences are put only at the start ("Are(LV) you(sub) happy(obj)?"). I wonder if in universe the sentence structure is AV-O-S-LV/HV in whatever his native language is. If so, that would be a very interesting language. PS: It's worth noting that linking verbs and helping verbs are the same words (am, are, is, was, were, etc.), the only difference is context, whether they're the sole verb in the sentence (LINKING the subject and object) or not (HELPING the main/action verb)

[@typhoonzebra]

Good god, you know so much. No one I know personally is as interested in this stuff as I am and no one I even know of is as interested in it as you. Good on you, man.

[@ryuko4478]

Join our conlanging server on Discord, or check the conlanging subreddit, Artifexian, while great for beginners, doesn't really go too in-depth

[@jacea6234]

The Fluid-S system makes me so excited! There’s so much potential in poetry and literature for expressing emotions (happiness wasn’t his choice, instead it came to him) and situations with this system. I’d love to study it more and find languages that have this. Thanks for the awesome video! This was super enticing ^_^

[@kyrla]

*cries in analytic* In Vaaran, neither A nor P are marked, and it's just by the word order. A V P. I make toast. You can't really play around with it, with one exception: You can add a prefix *e'* to the beginning of the verb to mark that it is "passive", i.e. P V A. Toast e'make I. For intransitive verbs, you can still add *e'*, but it changes the meaning slightly. It turns the verb transitive by, effectively, being "was made to". e.g. I sleep I e'sleep: I was made to sleep (e.g. by my tiredness, or someone with chloroform).

[@ryuko4478]

I think word order here is kinda considered to be a type of marking As long as A or P are treated like S (be it word order or inflection) then we are still talking the same concept

[@Artifexian]

Cool system.

[@kyrla]

+Shehab Omran in which case Vaaran's nom-acc, then. Mostly because I didn't realize that doing it in any way other than the way English did it was an option.

[@CrossFire589]

Just like Shehab Omran said, if the language doesn't mark any of SAP and it's purely based on word order, that's a type of alignment in itself, called direct alignment. An example of a purely direct language is Chinese, as well as all non-pronouns in English.

[@MilesHacker]

bruh how obscure is Vaaran? I looked it up and couldn't find anything explaining what it is lmao. Ima guess it's spoken in India though cause it appears to use the same script as Hindi.

[@MadSpectro7]

I think a better way to explain accusative vs. ergative alignment is as such: Accusativity emphasizes the action. Ergativity emphasizes the effect.

[@bobthebuilder4939]

Not really. A better explanation is that nom-acc emphasises the agent. Whereas erg-abs emphasise the object

[@dibujodecroquis1684]

Bob The Builder True. Good point.

[@SchmulKrieger]

Some language only exploits the ergativity when it is a resultstive, not generally an action done or caused on another thing but an action that creates or produces or results stuff. For example: I bake a cake, where I in in A and cake in P, but I like you, I is S and you is Accusative.

[@senantiasa]

@@SchmulKrieger There's not really an example of ergativity in English. The so-called English ergative verbs is not really how ergative languages work..

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@senantiasa I did not give an example about the ergativity in English rather an example of a resultative in an accusative language.

[@cadr003]

My native Tagalog has an Austronesian alignment, but everyday speech is constructed in ergative-like patterns.

[@elijahmikhail4566]

That's because we use the "common sentence pattern" which is either VSO or VOS, but formal speech uses the "uncommon" one which is SVO. By O, I mean the non-subject agent or patient. We use particles to mark the S or O, so morphosyntactic alignment wouldn't be complicated if it weren't for the fact that we have 6 voices. If you're a nonnative speaker, one mistake and you could be telling your native speaking friend that your shirt has washed some soap using your mom as an instrument.

[@Marjiance26]

This comment really fucked me up. I'm a native Tagalog speaker and I am still confused about our morphosyntactic alignment when I observe sentences but when speaking, I do just fine. Could you say, "Your shirt has washed some soap using your mom as an instrument" in Tagalog and with the right particles and alignment?

[@jasper-od3dv]

cadr003 This is actually quite interesting! For the common pattern (VSO and VOS respectively), take the examples "Bili si Mark ng mansanas para kay Juan," and "Bilhan si Juan ng mansanas ni Mark," i.e. "Mark bought an apple for Juan," and "Mark bought Juan an apple," vs. the uncommon (and more formal-sounding) SVO pattern of "Si Mark ay bili ng mansanas para kay Juan," i.e. "Mark bought an apple for Juan." The verb is always modified in relation to the voice and the tense being used. This owes to Tagalog's inherent Austronesian alignment, but there is one catch: Tagalog also uses the forms "nila, ninyo, and niya" (taken from "sila, kayo, siya.") This only ever happens when the subject is a pronoun in VSO order (like in "Kain la ang adobo," i.e. "They ate the adobo," which has an an agent trigger) and never when in SVO order (like in "Sila ay kumain ng adobo," i.e. "They ate the adobo." which has an object trigger.) So I'd say Tagalog uses Austronesian alignment for most cases and ergative meanwhile for pronouns in VSO.

[@ciflores0]

My parents speak Tagalog but I don't, and to me the voice system is definitely one of the most insane parts about trying to learn/understand it.

[@elijahmikhail4566]

Javie Mike I was honestly exaggerating a bit. But you could confuse probably up to two arguments by giving them the wrong particles. Remember that "si" and "ang" are for subjects while "ni" and "ng are for objects. So "Nilabhan ni mama ang damit ko." (Mom washed my clothes.) VS "Nilabhan si mama ng damit ko." (My clothes washed mom.) The issue is a lot more obvious when you write it down, but "ng and "ang" can sound alike when you're speaking, especially when you speak fast. Good thing that we use "yung" instead of "ang" in informal speech. However, throw in the issue that "si" is actually "ni" in Ilocano. I used to live in Baguio, and native Ilocano speakers interchanging those two words was a common source of confusion for me and teasing for them. You could also incorrectly conjugate the verb itself and use a different voice from what you intended and say, "Pinaglaba ako ni mama." (I was made to do laundry by my mom.) VS "Pinaglaban ako ni mama." (My mom did laundry for me.) Notice how one letter changed the voice of the sentence. Now consider "Pinanglaba ako ni mama." (I was used by mom to do laundry.) Also, this isn't standard, but in my dialect, one form of the agent trigger looks similar to the patient trigger, the only difference being the stress. For example, "NA-kain ako ng sibuyas." with a stress on the first syllable "na" means "I eat onions." However, if you put the stress on the second syllable "ka," it means "I was eaten by an onion." Obviously this funny example can be clarified just by context, but there are other situations where the meaning becomes ambiguous. I probably gave too many examples just to answer your question, but as you can see how easy it is to confuse two arguments. It's not as easy, however, to confuse three arguments with one agent, one patient and one instrument. This might be possible, but I couldn't think of an example, so it doesn't seem like a mistake one could make.

[@absinthe_apostle]

"I need a study break," I say naively, about to spot a 10 minute video on ergativity.

[@aleksandrnestrato]

Morphosyntactic alignment is my the most favorite topic and I can talk about it for hours and days. If no one listens, I talk to myself:) There is one theory that historically languages (both Nominative-Accusative and Absolutive-Ergative ones) marked both Agent and Patient and later lost one of those markers, since it was quite hard to built sentences like "He entered the room and saw her". Having a Tripartite System forced speaker to say He'UNMARKED' entered the room and he'ERG' saw her'ACC' There is a theory that there was no passive or antipassive voice in those languages and invention of those killed the Tripartite System. Speakers had to choose either model. Futher comes a totally unproved info. In times even before that, languages marked all thee arguments, just like in the beginning of this video - He'SUBJ' entered the room and he'ERG' saw her'ACC' But those "S"-markers were lost quite fast. Another theory states different idea, way more complex than the previous one. All of this stuff was once a giant system to do two major things: A. To differentiate between intentional and unintentional actions - like "I slip" and "I slide". B. To show difference between animated and unanimated subjects. And this part here is hell more vast and complex, since there are levels of 'animateness'. English language slates that people are alive and can be called HE and SHE while everything else is shit. Not only stones or chairs are IT, but also animals, plants and... children under certain age! Many other languages gather people and animals in one group (animated ones), stones, clouds, stars, buildings, cars into another group (unanimated ones) and trees, insects and marine lifeforms swing there and back from language to language. Sometimes within one language the speaker chooses how to treat the subject. Same in English: a dog can be HE or SHE and can be IT depending on the context. However! There's more to that. Modern languages mainly differentiate subjects relatively simple - alive or 'unalive'. But, just think of it, plants can be in a special group of subjects that are alive but don't think for example. We can call them semi-alive ones. Or even further: imagine a grammatical subgroup of subjects that are semi-alive and live on one spot (like plants or corals or mushrooms) and a grammatical subgroup of subjects that are semi-alive and walk/run/swim/fly/slither/formicate. Like insects for example, or worms. Thus there can be (and very likely it did take place in ancient languages) multiple levels of 'animateness'. Can you imagine how big and 'multicomponental' such system is! Morphosyntactic alignment is a huge topic, but it's a fraction of those giant two systems I described above. Another thing intrigues me - what if a certain language was Ergative one and lost its flexions and case system. Say like English. And only the word order showed what is where. "John loves Maria" - who is who here? Since Absolutive case is considered the neutral one in Ergative languages (as Nominative in most of the languages we are used to) will it be in the beginning of the sentence? John'ABL' loves Maria'ERG' - wops! - this is Maria who loves here:) Sooo, is it an OVS word order? And here comes the third issue that bothers me a lot. We study languages using Nominative-Accusative logic. Everyone who gets interested with linguistics immediately gets caught in this trap, because the whole modern linguistics was created by Europeans. And 99% of the European languages are Nominative-Accusative. Linguistics as a science was introduced by Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans. But even after decline of those great cultures multiple heterogeneal European cultures went on maintaining that Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman way of thinking. Even if linguistics was created in astonishingly ancient times, when Europe was inhabited by Pre-Indo-European culture(s), ancient Greeks and Romans 'corrected' linguists of the past in order to comply those rules with logic of their languages and eventually their way of thinking. Thus, even describing Absolutive-Ergative logic that is 180º opposite to our logic, we still use S-A-P or S-A-O models. Do you see it? That P stands for Patient and O stands for Object. We keep on trying to see receivers of an action. But the tricky part is that in "Ergative way of thinking" *the object is active and the subject is passive.* I am Russian. We have tight connections with Caucasus here for centuries and there are many Caucasians around. I talked to many native speakers of Caucasian languages (since Caucasians are fluent in Russian) and they told me wonderful things. Younger people don't understand ergativity, they just speak their language. Elder folks don't understand accusativity! They don't consider a verb as a way to describe movement of action from the doer. Like light beam that is being emitted from a body. They consider verbs as an action that is being experienced by the doer. The direction is 180º opposite. In accusativity we shine into the world and in ergativity kinda world shines into us (impossible to describe using English which is a Nominative-Accusative language). Even unmarked -and from the outside absolutely same sentences like "I eat" or "The dog is sleeping"- we and they will understand differently. To us - we do the eating, we do the sleeping, we do the walking or the working. For ergative folks they experience the eating, they experience the sleeping, they experience the walking or the working. If you think more about it - this way of thinking is a huge difference in behavior and in the way we treat the world. Ancient cultures (the further we go back in time, the more we see it) tended not to interfere into the world. They let the world be and were part of it. In Nominative-Accusative logic we DO. We change things around us and our verbs tell us that we are the masters here.

[@Jy3pr6]

Замечательный комментарий. Спасибо 🙏🏼 В Россию поеду, с Божию помощи, через Грузию, через пару месяцев. Я бразилец из Америки

[@williamkurtz8703]

Whatchu talkin' bout, son? Ancient cultures absolutely "interfered" with the world; they were just more limited in what they could accomplish. Hippy-dippy "harmony with nature" stuff is a luxury of the modern world, and not found in ancient cultures. E.g., slash-and-burn agriculture was practiced before any other type.

[@finnsalsa9304]

Yess! Finally, I understand the ergativity. Thank you so much! 💖

[@Artifexian]

No probs, pal.

[@bidaubadeadieu]

This is probably my favorite video of yours from the last few months! Excellent work on a topic I've frankly never heard of before. Vexillology has (somehow??) become a hot, shareable topic lately, so your flag video felt a little more derivative, but videos like these feel like they take me straight into unfamiliar literature, which I love.

[@Artifexian]

Haha! Lots of flag love happening around the world at the moment. I love it. :)

[@johnnyhoran9369]

Artifexian uploaded; drop everything.

[@Artifexian]

Hehe. Hope you enjoy.

[@QuotePilgrim]

The crazy thing is that the conlang I've been working on-and-off for about a decade now turned out to be ergative-absolutive completely by accident, before I even knew what morphosyntactic alignment was. Of course, once I learned about it, I took advantage of this fact to add more ergative-absolutive features to the language, and since it's not supposed to be a naturalistic language, there are next to none nominative-accusative features in it (if any at all). There are no explicit case markings though, the ergative case is marked solely by where the agent is placed in the sentence, that is to say word order is the only case marking in my conlang.

[@stephenwaldron4213]

Bajan Creole is direct in all instances except first person singular, in which it is accusative. she like she = she likes her it eat he = It ate him dem want we = they want us

[@Artifexian]

Really! Cool

[@stephenwaldron4213]

In writing that comment, I realized something. Though just the base of transitive verbs (and those that take prepositions) used in sentences generally denote past tense, that doesn't seem to be the case for some. From what I can tell, and what's interesting is that those exceptions seem to all be feelings. *Normal* Past: I watch TV = I watched TV Present: I duz watch TV = I watch TV Past: I drive ta de store = I drove to the store. I duz drive ta de store = I drive to the store. *But* I like she = I like her. I tink he lying = I think that he's lying. I feel I see he before = I think (have a feeling, feel as though) that I've seen him before. I found this interesting.

[@parthiancapitalist2733]

Cool

[@oliviax727]

grug lesbian moment "Me man, me mate" "No bro, her like she" "Call good, her gay" "Respect hustle" "Taco taste good indeed"

[@exodus_20_15]

0:21 EVERYWHERE I GO I SEE THEIR FACES

[@Clips.nownow]

Im confused, if a language uses a direct system will every pronoun be the same word or will they all use the same varieties of words.

[@the_linguist_ll]

There’s usually a hierarchy involved that distinguishes them, and context picks up the slack where the hierarchy leaves ambiguity. Let’s say the hierarchy is 1>2>3.ANM>3.INM. Let’s also say that both arguments are marked on the verb, but use the same set of affixes, so a 3rd person subject would be marked with the same affix as a 3rd person object. In a language with such a hierarchy, it would be assumed by default that the argument higher on the hierarchy than the other is the subject. “1-2-see” would be interpreted as “I see you” and not “you see me”. In some such languages, you’d need to use some other construction to say “you see me”. In cases where both are tied on the hierarchy, there are usually other means such as obviation or discourse context to say which is which. Some languages have something extra, a morpheme that goes on the verb that inverses the hierarchy. These languages have an alignment type called direct-inverse, my favorite. An example would be “1-3-threw rock”. Since 1st person is higher on the hierarchy, this would have to mean “I threw the rock”, but if you add the inverse marker “1-3-threw-INV rock” it would mean “the rock threw me”.

[@Clips.nownow]

@ thank you

[@Star-cr4mc]

You should give an example from language that use ergativity. Then it will become simple for english speaker.

[@Yarkanlaki]

For all ergative lang. try to say. And you remembered me too as well as I did 😂

[@pilot_bruh576]

As a filipino with a language with ergativity Liked I this (Nagustuhan ko ito)

[@MsLaBajo]

Morphology is SO HARD!

[@mp2956]

This all sounds like voodoo witchcraft to me. I easily understand how the Basque ergative system works, but there I feel totally lost at sea. Not the right examples perhaps.

[@shinydewott]

I have a conlang where only animate nouns can be the agent of a verb, and so I use ergative marking (A is marked but S and P aren’t). I imagine this language can’t really adopt a “Pronominal split”, but I would like a second opinion on that idea

[@stdoval]

Currently studying euskara (basque) and yeah, it's a mindblow.

[@LarthVolos]

Is there such system as Ergative-accusative? Verb would be in passive always and agent and patient would be marked (suffix orwhatever)? Or would this be part of what is just described in video?

[@the_linguist_ll]

Ergative-accusative would have one case cover P and another cover S & P, and leave A uncovered. There’s Nominative-Absolutive though, which would have a S & A and a S & P case, so sometimes the sole argument of an intransitive acts like an agent of a transitive, and other times like the patient. This is essentially fluid-s alignment.

[@on_my_own_two_feet]

Dude, best explanation of ergativity out there. You nailed this! Big props!

[@DefaultFlame]

The main thing to take away from this video is that language is confusing.

[@FieldLing639]

True, but a lot is just finding the right explanation or example to make it click. It’s a never-ending rabbit hole filled with an infinite amount of never-ending rabbit holes, luckily nobody is expected to know everything

[@orestestrivellas3153]

tl;dr Perma-passive

[@rasaanshakur9491]

On my 10th watch

[@heylooka]

5:42 I love the casual use of a neopronoun :D (this is mainly just an algorithm boost comment but I thought it’s something to point out)

[@Jy3pr6]

With your explanation of the anti passive voice, don’t you lose information by not mentioning Brock is the one who Ash being seen by? Does this indicate that ergative systems are in this regard less useful in some way?

[@Calvin_Barnes]

No, because you can do the same thing with the passive voice in English. When he did the passive explanation, he could just as well have said "Luke arrived and was seen," and it would have still made sense grammatically. In either system, you can still include the information. It just wouldn't take the role of agent or patient. Luke arrived and was seen _by Yoda._ Ash arrived and saw _towards Brock_ (or something like that).

[@Jy3pr6]

Thanks for the response, but how do you form the antipassive voice and preserve the information about Ash having seen Brock?

[@loveurself764]

What are some fluid s languages?

[@SchmulKrieger]

The fact that »to drink« looks transitive does make everything harder, because »to drink« is in fact intransitive.

[@idle_speculation]

“I drink you” technically makes sense, but it’s not in a context that would come up often in regular conversation

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@idle_speculation IT does not!

[@deronnamadeuspanti-tk3sm]

Artifexian like I.

[@Markuttd]

I think i get it, Ergative marks the agent: the one that does something and Accusative marks the patient: the one that does nothing, right?

[@brauljo]

7:22 That's pretty cool, I wonder what the limitations are.

[@brauljo]

4:15 lol "doobly-doo" appears in dictionaries.

[@javindhillon6294]

"Ash arrived and Brock saw" makes total sense,and I'm a native English speaker . I mean what else could Brock have seen given the previous info?

[@pumpkin2477]

This hurts my brain, and I like it

[@hugonegrete6325]

WHEN THE CONCEPT CLICKS THOUGH

[@taurus_x_cz]

I can't tell you how many times I've seen this video and still don't really get it ahah

[@alexwarmouth6012]

Is is naturalistic to have a volition-based split in nominative-accusative languages?

[@catiamaturana8792]

Wouldn't the agent follow the intransitive verb in the ergative syntax? E.g. Ran Mario

[@novaace2474]

These concepts made no sense to me for so long, thank you soooooo much. No I just have to reword, like, all of my conlang…

[@Tranxhead]

Oh, that explanation of uses for the antipassive voice hit some spots.

[@phicoding7533]

-|----\/-----=| /|\ |=-----\/----|-

[@BeneathTheBrightSky]

Wait, what if I want my language to be ergative, but I still want the agent to come first? For instance, the sentence: Ka (past-tense positive) amlapiizhuva (causative (am) + injury-verb) ra (agent marker) bu (singular third-person female (also agent)) qa (3rd person plural). Or, Ka amlapiizhuva ra bu qa: she hurt them (in the past). Would that be allowed? (looking at the chart at 2:56). Also, this could bring in a bit of accusativity (?)

[@hademvids]

Working on a conlang right now with both voluntary and involuntary subject and object markers. They can convey resistance to an action, participation, purpose or accidents, animacy, and a whole lot more.

[@sprigslashvital291]

1:43 🏳️‍🌈

[@ighao6032]

dude, the distinction Fluid-S languages have makes so much sense! wish they were more common

[@JoseAMG-wv7rm]

I have rewatched this video thinking that there would be some kind of split ergativity depending if the patient was definite or indefinite, but apparently it doesn't happen in any language. I'll try to develop it.

[@sambarboo4701]

I focused on Ergativity in Dzongkha for my masters degree in linguistics many years ago and had such a difficult time QUICKLY explaining Ergativity to other people. This video is awesome in how efficiently and effectively you explain it. Bravo!

[@SnoFitzroy]

7:20 more languages should have this. I love the idea of intent being baked into the verb usage. Because setimes, when you do something, you're not performing the action, the action is happening to you. And I think that's an interesting philosophy to have built in.

[@malachiosborn9452]

Thanks for making this. I've been trying to figure out what the weird alignment system I made up for my Conlang was and now I know it's fluid s.

[@chireiuji2047]

Why are the majority of languages accusive and there is no completely ergative language in reality? Because the individual itself is the naturally, definitely, absoluetly and morally the centre of itself, and the accused object instead of the accusive subjuct is the intruder that naturally needs to be marked.

[@s0mni]

i remember being so confused by any morphosyntactic alignment apart from nom-acc. now my conlang has austronesian alignment

[@ummmmmmmmm200]

this is insane

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

Fish gives flower - active voice Flower is given (by fish) - passive voice Fish is giver (of flower) - as close as you can reasonably get to antipassive in English

[@infiniteplanes5775]

Huh. My conlang is nomitive-accusative. If a verb has a single argument, that argument is automatically the subject. If the verb has two arguments, then they are always the subject and direct object. But if I have to have case marked anyways, I could change some things about it. Upon further inspection, every verb can be interpreted as having three arguments. titnauk sollert par. The person attacks. titnauk sollert fa. Attack the person. titnauk sollert thei. Attack using the person.

[@lizzyshengshengzhou]

You explained it so well! I just wanted to let you how much I appreciate this video!

[@WetSaucySlommy]

When I put my pronouns as him/he instead of he/him everyone has to talk about me like this

[@aycc-nbh7289]

What about how Spanish verbs are mainly nominative-accusative (“yo encuentro”, “yo condujo”), but some are ergative (“me gusta”, “me encanta”)?

[@anshulkrishnadasbhagwat962]

I was shocked with how many features I realised existed in my native language Konkani. It has the Past-non Past split as well as the fluid S split.

[@maxquayle2519]

5:45 neopronouns!

[@eliorahg]

As of S (A P) alignment at 6:00, it is called "transitive" and it happens in Rushani.

[@badday4885]

Wait, so at 4:17, how can you just drop “Brock” from the sentence? There’s no way to mark that on the noun or verb, right?

[@zyibesixdouze4863]

He says that it's innaccurate because English wasn't built to handle it.

[@Artifexian]

It's an imperfect example cause English doesn't deal with the antipassive voice. My guess is (and I could be wrong here) that the verb would change form in a language that uses the antipassive voice but such a form does not exist in English.

[@badday4885]

Artifexian got you, thanks for the reply :)

[@RossMcDowall94]

No matter how you modify the verb you would lose information, unless the verb had Brock in it. I can imagine saw in an antipassive voice but not in such a way that contains Brock. Surely it would be Ash came and (anti-passive saw) Brock.

[@saschabaer3327]

The antipassive drops information on the patient the same way the passive drops information on the agent. It can be recovered with a preposition if this is wished.

[@AWSMcube]

this is genuinely one of the coolest videos ive seen in ages. forgot about my passion for linguistics for a while, thank you for sparking it up again

[@azhadial7396]

I did the first minute of the translation in French (although, it still needs to be verified and obviously completed: I might continue the translation later). It takes a lot... a very lot... a very big lot... a huge very big lot of time! edit: I did the first 3 minutes PS: Could you try not to end your sentence in the middle of a tenth of a second? KZbin subtitles' timing cannot be more precise than a tenth of a second. Lol.

[@Mrs._Fenc]

I still give you the credit for properly teaching me intransitive and transitive verbs that my teacher has failed over a semester to do.

[@imrukiitoaoffire1908]

This took me about 24 re-watches to finally get this whole thing.

[@MadSpectro7]

This made me think of a great advantage of SOV word order; it allows for an analytic language to have an ambiguous morphosyntactic alignment. As long as word order is definite, the simple act of placing the subject/agent before the object/patient makes the sentence semantically clear.

[@markspringsvlogs8790]

This is one of the only small channels in my subscription list. Here, this video will demonstrate why that is the case.

[@Neldidellavittoria]

Mind-boggling. As far as accusative and ergative I was feeling so clever. Then you started with the combinations and I felt such a doofus. :)

[@joeyuzwa891]

this helped so much on my final paper for my archaeology class! Reasearching the verbal grammar of Classic Maya (where each verb has inherent aspect and debatably inherent ergativity that acts like an equivalent... basically their verbs have their own noun cases.... also their nouns have inherent verbs.... it’s a. ery strange language) made sooooo much more sense

[@Kraigon42]

I don't think I fully followed you there, but that was a trip and a half. Fantastic presentation, both in the verbal and graphical styles.

[@Cydonius1701]

This is an excellent video :) Ergativity has confused the life out of me ever since my boyfriend at Uni started studying Basque as a hobby. But as the saying goes, a picture tells a thousand words and you present it in a way that makes such intuitive sense in my mind. I'd ended up settling on a split-s alignment for a language I'm building, though hadn't thought through the potential for expressing slip~slide type volition using the same verb yet. I was still thinking how it impacts on what IE languages use passive voice to express. So not only to the usual high standard but perfect timing to boot :)

[@יואביאייל]

1:14 A lot of languages have redundancy, it helps in a case were the listener misses a part of the sentence.

[@Artifexian]

That's fair but redundancy does help here. There is a pressure to mark S like A or O. If there weren't we'd see a lot of tripartite systems.

[@obviativ123]

This is the very best explaination of ergativity one can find in the internet. Very helpful, thank you (and the people who helped you) for making this :)

[@wintergray1221]

I have been trying to understand ergativity, but everything I've read just didn't click with my brain and only confused me further. Turns out all I needed was diagrams and your wonderful accent. Thanks so much!

[@Curupira106]

Dude! You used Powerpuff Girls without me noticing and actually explained transitive and intransitive in a way I could understand and remember, something my university grammar instructor failed to do. Sub!

[@anniedavenhill4157]

I had an assignment to do with explaining the case alignment pattern of an anonymous language. This has given me the information I need to solve it. Thank you so much! Such a helpful video.

[@Alice-gr1kb]

I like the fluid one. It gets rid of verbs, which works for my conlang as the speakers live in the north. Voluntary things are ergative, and involuntary is normal. So “she is on the dragon” means she didn’t mean to get in it. But “the dragon is on she” means she deliberately got in it.

[@nayticatellamy15110]

I have just subscribed despite this being only the second video of yours I've watched! Thanks for making my linguistic studies much easier to understand! The language in WALS (which is basically my textbook this semester) tend to be very formal and could take a couple passes to understand, so this video really helped me understand chapter 108!

[@wanderingrandomer]

This is probably the most easy to understand sourse on the subject I've found. You know, I struggled so much with the concept of ergativity in the past. It is deceptively simple but comes very unnaturally to nominative-accusative language speakers that I couldn't imagine it. I can imagine a fluid-S system being used to encode more information, as in your example of deliberate vs involuntary action.

[@mfC0RD]

I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out some years ago. I think this video explained it impressively well for ten minutes! I wish I could have had access to an explanation as good as this one back then.

[@MelangeThief]

Some extra notes on Dyirbal: - While Dyirbal has accusative-aligned 1st and 2nd person pronouns morphologically, the pronouns are still syntactically ergative! You can demonstrate this using S/P pivot sentences - A first or second person S in an initial clause still requires an antipassive construction in order to be an A in the second clause, even though S and A forms are morphologically identical! - As if pronominal morphosyntactic alignment wasn't complicated enough in Dyirbal, the relative pronoun (that is, the pronoun that introduces a relative clause, like "whom" in "the man whom I met yesterday") has tripartite alignment! If you want to read more about these, you can read R. M. W. Dixon's grammar on Dyirbal from the late 70s (if I recall the year on it correctly).

[@MalekiRe]

My teacher used your video in my latin class to help teach the class about accustive cases in latin.

[@minirop]

When I watched David Peterson's video about this subject few years ago, I was quite "lost", thanks for plugging the holes in my head.

[@Artifexian]

Brill, glad I could be of service.

[@JulianJuanli]

Thank you very much, Edgar! I started constructing a conlang with tenses split ergativity, inspried by your video. That is super mega fun to mess it.

[@minewarz]

In one or two months, you'll probably get your 100K well deserved subs!

[@Artifexian]

I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!

[@jeffreydahmer2110]

i kurdish we have a clitic which attaches to the end of a verb in its past tense indicating person ad number. this clitic can change however, depending on the verb. if the verb is transitive, the clitic indicates that the verb is acted by the agent. if the verb is intransitive, the clitic indicates that the verb acted upon the subject, somewhat treating it like an object of a transitive verb.

[@redpanda1765]

Well, I understood almost half the video at the first try. Now I'll watch it four times more.

[@thevampirematrix816]

Thanks you so much! This coupled with about 2 hours worth of skimming through biblaridion videos featuring split ergativity in his conlangs have lead me to create my own language, which has ergativity split on animacy and, to a certain extent, grammatical voice. Thanks artifexian! :)

[@incorporealnuance]

Split-Ergative, or, "Splugative", if you will

[@ConlangKrishna]

Wow, great job! Such a difficult topic in such an easily understandable way. Thank you for this!

[@theguy5898]

Hindi is an example of using Split Ergativity in the past tense. When we talk about the preterite tense (not imperfect), we have to use the particle "ne" to show the "do-er" of a verb. Something interesting happens in the sentence. Verbs in Hindi usually take the gender of the subject of the sentence, but in the preterite the gender of the verb depends upon the object. Present tense sentence: Mai khaanaa khaati hu. (I eat food) In this sentence the verb "khaati hu" is in the feminine form which tells us that the subject of the sentence ("mai", which means "I") is a female person. Preterite tense sentence: Maine khaanaa khaayaa. (I ate food) In this sentence, the verb "khaayaa" is in the masculine form because the object "khaanaa" (food) is a masculine word, even though the "mai" might be feminine in this case. The gender of the person who ate the food is unknown in this sentence. We can also see the particle "ne" attached to the "mai" making it "maine" (pronounced meh-nay). Side note: Split Ergativity only occurs in Hindi with transitive verbs in the preterite tense. Intransitive verbs don't require the "ne"

[@LinguaPhiliax]

This is fantastic. I was confused when I first saw the word "Antipassive" in the Bundjalung dictionary and this explains it really well. Loads of Australian languages work this way.

[@kosukemiura1226]

i just realized my native language is ergative-absolutive and im shaking