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A nitpick, but this is known as ‘neutral’ alignment, rather than ergative alignment. Ergativity is specifically when the transitive subject (‘ergative’ argument
by bradrn 4y ago
A nitpick, but this is known as ‘neutral’ alignment, rather than ergative alignment. Ergativity is specifically when the transitive subject (‘ergative’ argument) is treated differently to the transitive object/intransitive subject, which are treated the same way (‘absolutive’ argument). By contrast, in the Latin case, all three arguments are treated the same way — hence, ‘neutral’ alignment.
Incidentally, English has a very similar pattern: most animate pronouns have nominative–accusative alignment, while nouns and inanimate pronoun have neutral alignment. It’s pretty common in Indo–European languages.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoI was under the impression that the unification of nominative and accusative case for neuters in Indo-European languages was indeed felt to derive from an ergative-absolutive distinction in proto-Indo-European. The idea would be that neuters can't be agents and are therefore always absolutive.
- bradrn 4y agoI’ve definitely seen some speculation about PIE having been ergative at one point (or at least split intransitive), but I don’t know enough about it myself to have a strong opinion either way. I believe it isn’t widely-accepted though.