Questions: Ergative-Absolutive Systems and Their Properties

Question 1

In an ergative-absolutive language, consider: 'She sleeps' and 'She kicked him.' Which noun phrases receive the *same* grammatical marking?

• A. 'She' in both sentences — both are the initiator of the action
• B. 'She' in 'she sleeps' and 'she' in 'she kicked him' — both are grammatical subjects
• C. 'She' in 'she sleeps' and 'him' in 'she kicked him' — both are absolutive
• D. 'She kicked him' has no absolutive noun phrase because both participants are marked differently

Answer: (C)

In ergative-absolutive alignment, the intransitive subject (S) and the transitive object (O) receive the same absolutive marking, while the transitive agent (A) receives the ergative case. 'She sleeps' has an intransitive S; 'him' in 'she kicked him' is the transitive O. Both are absolutive. 'She' in 'she kicked him' is the transitive A — ergative. This is the opposite of English, which groups S with A (both 'she') and marks O differently ('him').

Question 2

What does the phenomenon of split ergativity reveal about the nature of ergative alignment?

• A. Some languages are in transition from ergative to accusative alignment as they modernize
• B. Ergativity is a single, all-or-nothing grammatical property that a language either has or lacks
• C. Ergativity is defective accusativity — split systems show the accusative pattern reasserting itself
• D. Ergativity can be conditioned by tense, aspect, or pragmatics, suggesting it tracks discourse-level properties rather than being a monolithic category

Answer: (D)

Split ergativity (e.g., Hindi-Urdu using ergative in perfective past but accusative in other tenses; Tzotzil splitting on aspect) shows that ergativity is not monolithic. Its distribution tracks properties like how events are framed, the salience of the agent in completed actions, and pragmatic focus — not just a fixed morphological inventory. This conditionality is theoretically significant: it implies that what looks like a case-marking rule is also doing discourse-pragmatic work.

Question 3

In an ergative-absolutive language, the transitive agent receives a grammatically marked case that the intransitive subject does not.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is the defining feature of ergative alignment: the ergative case marks A (transitive agent) exclusively. Both the intransitive subject (S) and transitive object (O) appear in the absolutive (typically the unmarked or zero case). So ergativity treats the transitive agent as the exceptional, marked participant — unlike accusative systems, which treat the transitive object as the marked one.

Question 4

Ergative-absolutive alignment is simply a mirror image of nominative-accusative alignment — the same groupings with the labels swapped.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

The two systems make fundamentally different groupings, not just different labels. Nominative-accusative groups S (intransitive subject) with A (transitive agent). Ergative-absolutive groups S with O (transitive object). These are different partitions of the same three roles — you cannot get one from the other by renaming. The philosophical consequence is also different: ergative systems treat agentivity as the marked category, while accusative systems treat it as the default around which everything else is organized.

Question 5

Why might a linguist say that ergative systems treat agency as the 'marked' or exceptional grammatical role rather than as the default?

Model answer: In ergative-absolutive systems, the absolutive (the unmarked or zero case) covers both intransitive subjects and transitive objects — the roles that are not causing anything to happen to someone else. The ergative case is the special marker reserved for the transitive agent: the one who acts on another participant. By making agency the *marked* category (requiring its own case) rather than the default (the baseline case shared with other roles), ergative grammars encode agency as the exceptional, distinctive participant role rather than the neutral one.

This contrasts with accusative systems, where the 'subject' — which defaults to the agent — is the unmarked baseline, and it is the object that requires special marking. The choice of what to mark is never neutral: it reflects assumptions about which participant role is the most salient or expected. Ergative systems essentially say: 'most participants in events are not causing things to happen to others; when one is, we mark that specifically.'