In ergative-absolutive languages, the absolutive (abbreviated ABS) is the grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb. An ergative-absolutive Language (or simply ergative language is a language that treats the argument (" subject " of an Intransitive For the HTML tag see HTML element. An abbreviation (from Latin brevis "short" In Grammar, the case of a Noun or Pronoun indicates its Grammatical function in a greater Phrase or Clause; such as the In Grammar, an intransitive Verb does not take an object. In more technical terms an intransitive verb has only one argument (its subject In Syntax, a transitive verb is a Verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs It contrasts with the ergative case, which marks the subject of transitive verbs. The ergative case is the Grammatical case that identifies the subject of a Transitive verb in Ergative-absolutive languages In such languages

For example, in Basque the noun mutil ("boy") takes the absolutive singular ending -a both as subject of the intransitive clause mutila etorri da ("the boy came") and as object of the transitive clause Irakasleak mutila ikusi du ("the teacher has seen the boy"), in which the subject bears the ergative ending -ak. Basque ( native name: euskara) is the Language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain

In the languages of this kind, the ergative case is typically marked (most salient), while the absolutive case is unmarked. The ergative case is the Grammatical case that identifies the subject of a Transitive verb in Ergative-absolutive languages In such languages Markedness is a linguistic concept that developed out of the Prague School (also known as the Prague linguistic circle) For this reason, words in absolutive case are usually used as the lemma to represent a lexeme. In Linguistics a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata) has two distinct interpretations morphology / Lexicography: the For its use in the context of Computer Science see Lexical analysis.

See also

• Morphosyntactic alignment

In Linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of Transitive verbs and those of Intransitive

© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic