Ergativity Explained

Рет қаралды 5,666

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 24

@AdrianaGiacominni 7 ай бұрын

Simplifying and putting in a nutshell, ergativity is considering the accusative the center of meaning of a phrase, instead of the nominative. The emphasis is not on the actor, but on the receiver of the action

@thequantumcat184 8 ай бұрын

I'm Basque, and this video somehow confused the shit out of 😅😂

@georgianguy3191 8 ай бұрын

Same as a Georgian

@alexzgreat133 Жыл бұрын

Great video! Never knew there were two types of ergativity!

@chappidopho2395 Жыл бұрын

At 0:31 the 'а' in 'людина' is actually the feminine ending. While it CAN be used as a nominative case, in that scenario it's used to denote the gender of the noun. In fact, I have yet to see ukranian mark any nouns for nominative.

@LarthVolos 8 ай бұрын

Finnish has funny things reminding of ergativity. I must do = minun täytyy tehdä, where minun is accusative and verb täytyy is in passive. Not minä täydyn tehdä (minä nominative, täydyn 1.p.sg present). There's other things in Finnish similar. That gives an idea if Uralic was originally ergative language. We know that there were migration wave over the Urals to west. So has anybody studied whether Uralic languages and Ket (which is ergative language) are related.

@Me-mt9rq 25 күн бұрын

Ur so underrated 😔❤

@leo-zo8cp Жыл бұрын

very nice video, it permits me a better understanding of ergativity, thank you :D

@fsbayer Жыл бұрын

Great video! A question I have is, to what extent does semantic ergativity overlap with morphological ergativity in natlangs? So for example, are there natlangs where the following would be the case: I see him. = Meaning: I see him. Him sees. = Meaning: He is seen. (And then to express the concept of "He sees" intransitive, you would have "Him sees" but with "sees" being marked as antipassive)

@pimenefusarund8379 8 ай бұрын

but isnt broke and cooking in this context like a slightly different word. Broke meaning the acting of breaking something and the act of breaking yourself. And in cooking its the act of preparing and putting it in the oven and the act of being in the oven and "cooking"? At least in my mind these feel like two different words almost

@TrueSchwar 8 ай бұрын

One could view it as a zero derivation change in valency, but generally the transitive and intransitive versions of break and cook are considered the same word, like one would view the transitive and intransitive forms of the verb eat as on word.

@spaghettiking653 Жыл бұрын

5:45 I question whether this is really a form of ergativity, because it can really be applied to any transitive verb: having an object for transitive verbs is more or less optional; you can just as well say "the man kills" or "the man disembowels", and the object is not named at all, yet the sentence remains valid; this would surely make every verb in English able to be used ergatively, which I think is a weird explanation.

@TrueSchwar Жыл бұрын

Ambi-transitivity isn’t a mark of ergativity. It just means that the verb doesn’t require an object in unmarked sentences. Now basically every verb in English can be found in a context without an object, but most of them are marked. Now ergativity can appear in some ambi-transitive verbs, like ‘break’. Unlike ‘eat’, where “I eat the cake” and “the cake eats” have two completely different meanings. One being what I will do tonight, the later a monstrous situation. “I break the cup” and “the cup breaks” are describing the near same situation, of the cup breaking. The difference being that the first sentence has an agent, and the later doesn’t, which by all accounts, is ergativity. So ambi-transitivity =/= ergativity in English. It’s just that ergativity is found in a few ambi-transitive verbs.

@spaghettiking653 Жыл бұрын

@@TrueSchwar I see, thanks for clarifying my misconception. I should've paid better attention... Though I feel I understood a little bit better now what ergative alignment is meant to be now; I don't know how many times I've heard explanations of it and then promptly forgotten the gist of it, lol. I must say I do remember seeing such a an ambitransitive horror spectacle on the Garfield show, in which a cake gained sentience and began terrorising the residence... truly a terrifying sight, it struck fear into my 9-year-old heart. Thanks for the video and for your quick response, have a great day!

@4nk Жыл бұрын

@@TrueSchwar Maybe English has split-ergativity (I hadn't had studied English to such degree) but staying with Your example, isn't it that intransitive "break" is unaccusative? Like, citing Wikipedia: "unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb whose grammatical subject is not a semantic agent. In other words, the subject does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action expressed by the verb. An unaccusative verb's subject is semantically similar to the direct object of a transitive verb or to the subject of a verb in the passive voice." And, many unaccusative verbs (specifically anticausative) can participate in "causative alternation" (called ambi-transitivity in this video) between anticausative and causative. And it isn't that lack of agent = ergativity. I know that Polish doesn't have split-ergativity (though experiencing rise of such things as topic-prominency in an IE language, everything is possible :) ) but the same sentence with "break" as Your abovementioned one in Polish would be "(Ja) rozbiłem kubek" "Kubek [Pat] się rozbił", where "się" is a reflexive pronoun. It's just mediopassive (in Polish, at least coinciding with, but having the same structure as, middle) voice, not split-erg. Furthermore, sentence in good old passive voice, by definition, also lacks agent unless specified facultatively as an indirect object! ;) Disclaimer: It isn't that I played Your explanation of Erg-Abs alignment only to criticise You. In fact, I didn't know about e.g. how syntactic part of ergativity works.

@TrueSchwar Жыл бұрын

My take away is that unaccusative verbs are a product of semantic ergativity. Although it’s not shown syntactically or morphological, the fact that the main argument of these unaccusative/ambitransitive verbs is that of the patient and not the agent, is a sign of ergativity. By that extension, passive sentences could be considered ergative, if not ergative like. As not only does the passive make the main argument of the verb it’s semantic patient, but it also simulates a “transitive vs. intransitive” dichotomy in if the agent is mentioned or not. When it isn’t marked, the passive verb is effectively intransitive with an unaccusative sole. “The food was eaten” But if we included the agent, suddenly we have a transitive with a patient and agent, and the patient being marked the same as the sole of the ‘intransitive’ form, and the agent being marked different from both the patient and sole. “The food was eaten by me”. Now this is part of my understanding of ergativity. There are many other opinions, by people with much more impressive backgrounds than me, and there is a lot of fighting between all of them about what exactly ergativity is and isn’t. One of those schools of thought is that ergativity is only marked morpho-syntactically, and that semantic ergativity isn’t a thing. In which case, the unaccusative/ambitransitive verbs and passive can’t be ergative (though even then the passive can be argued to be ergative) However, as I have shown, I do believe that semantic ergativity is a thing, and by extension, believe that most languages are split ergative to an extent.

@4nk Жыл бұрын

@@TrueSchwar Oh, I have never thought about passive being ergative-ish, it seems so... unorthodox. As for different schools of thoughts concerning semantic ergativity, I'm sorry, I am more of the maths & CS guy and I am always forgetting about humane sciences being interpretational. Thanks for reminding me.