Tripartite language

An ergative - accusative language (English tripartite language " tripartite language" ) is a language that marks the subject of an intransitive sentence, the subject of a transitive sentence and the object of a transitive sentence differently. The language provides a system of morphological case, the different syntactic functions as follows be referred to:

  • The subject of an intransitive sentence by the absolutive
  • The subject of a transitive set by the ergative
  • The object of a transitive set by the accusative

Languages ​​without case marking bring these distinctions, for example, by the word order expressed.

A language with ergative - accusative alignment, for example, the Nez Percé, an indigenous North American language. Here, the absolutive is the basic form, which is marked with the ergative suffix - nim and the accusative with - ne.

Ergative - accusative languages ​​are extremely rare among the languages ​​of the world.

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