Information about Active Stative Language
argument of an intransitive verb is sometimes marked in the same way as the agent of a transitive verb (that is, like a subject in English), and sometimes in the same way as the direct object of a transitive verb. That is, the case of the intransitive argument (often symbolized as S) varies according to criteria particular to each language. These criteria tend to be based on the degree of volition or control over the verbal action exercised by the participant.
For most languages of this type, the case of the intransitive argument is lexically fixed for each verb, regardless of the actual degree of volition of the subject, but often corresponding to the most typical situation. For example, the argument of swim is always treated like the transitive subject (agent-like), and the argument of sleep is always treated like the transitive direct object (patient-like). In a language like this, if the subject of a verb like swallow is defined as agentive, it will be always marked so, even if the action of swallowing is involuntary. This subtype is sometimes known as split-S.
In other languages, the marking of the intransitive argument is decided by the speaker based on semantic considerations. That is, for any given intransitive verb the speaker may choose whether to mark the subject as agentive or patientive, with agentive marking implying a degree of volition or control, and patientive implying lack of volition or control, suffering, or sympathy on the part of the speaker. This subtype is sometimes known as fluid-S.
If the language has morphological case, then the arguments of a transitive verb are marked using the agentive case for the subject and the patientive case for the object, while the argument of an intransitive verb may be marked as either.
Languages lacking case inflections may indicate case with different word orders, using adpositions, etc. For example, the patientive argument might precede the verb, while the agentive argument might follow.
Cross-linguistically, the agentive argument tends to be marked, and the patientive argument tends to be unmarked. That is, if one case is indicated by zero-inflection, it is often the patientive.
The names of the subtypes, split-S and fluid-S, come from the designation of the single argument of intransitive verbs as S. They were first used by R. M. W. Dixon in 1979. Since the other ubiquitous core arguments are termed A (agent of a transitive verb) and O (object, or patient of a transitive verb), active languages can be described as languages which align S = O or S = A according to the criteria explained above, and contrasting to accusative languages that align S = A in the vast majority of cases, and to ergative languages that align S = O in the vast majority of cases.
Tsova-Tush, a Caucasian language is an active language. According to Holisky (1987), there are 31 intransitive verbs where the argument is always marked as patientive and which refer to uncontrollable states ("be hungry", "tremble", etc.), and 78 intransitve verbs with an agentive argument ("walk", "talk", "think"). These form a split-S subset of the verbs. The rest of the verbs form a fluid-S system; for instance, a single verb root can be interpreted as "slip" when used with a patientive argument, and as "slide" with an agentive argument.
Guaraní, a South American native language spoken mainly in Paraguay, has been analyzed as a close-to-ideal active language of the fluid-S type. In Mesoamerica the Oto-Manguean languages Chochotec and Amuzgo are active languages of the split-S type, with some verbs showing fluid-S alignment. Among North American languages, Chickasaw (see: pronominal affixes), Lakhota and many others also show active alignment.
The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language shows many features known to correlate with active alignment, among them the animate vs. inanimate distinction, related to the distinction between active and inactive or stative verb arguments. Even in its descendant languages there are traces of a morphological split between volitional and nonvolitional verbs, such as a pattern in verbs of perception and cognition where the argument takes an oblique case, a relic of which can be seen in English methinks.
Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment that combines features of ergative and accusative languages.
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For most languages of this type, the case of the intransitive argument is lexically fixed for each verb, regardless of the actual degree of volition of the subject, but often corresponding to the most typical situation. For example, the argument of swim is always treated like the transitive subject (agent-like), and the argument of sleep is always treated like the transitive direct object (patient-like). In a language like this, if the subject of a verb like swallow is defined as agentive, it will be always marked so, even if the action of swallowing is involuntary. This subtype is sometimes known as split-S.
In other languages, the marking of the intransitive argument is decided by the speaker based on semantic considerations. That is, for any given intransitive verb the speaker may choose whether to mark the subject as agentive or patientive, with agentive marking implying a degree of volition or control, and patientive implying lack of volition or control, suffering, or sympathy on the part of the speaker. This subtype is sometimes known as fluid-S.
If the language has morphological case, then the arguments of a transitive verb are marked using the agentive case for the subject and the patientive case for the object, while the argument of an intransitive verb may be marked as either.
Languages lacking case inflections may indicate case with different word orders, using adpositions, etc. For example, the patientive argument might precede the verb, while the agentive argument might follow.
Cross-linguistically, the agentive argument tends to be marked, and the patientive argument tends to be unmarked. That is, if one case is indicated by zero-inflection, it is often the patientive.
Terminology
Active languages are a relatively new field of study; in other times active alignment was not recognized as such, and was mostly treated as an interesting deviation from the standard alternatives (nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive). Besides, active languages are few, and they often show complications and special cases ("pure" active alignment is an ideal). Therefore, the terminology used to describe them is rather flexible. Active languages are also termed active-stative or even nominative-absolutive. The terms agentive case and patientive case used above are descriptive but not standard.The names of the subtypes, split-S and fluid-S, come from the designation of the single argument of intransitive verbs as S. They were first used by R. M. W. Dixon in 1979. Since the other ubiquitous core arguments are termed A (agent of a transitive verb) and O (object, or patient of a transitive verb), active languages can be described as languages which align S = O or S = A according to the criteria explained above, and contrasting to accusative languages that align S = A in the vast majority of cases, and to ergative languages that align S = O in the vast majority of cases.
Examples of active languages
Georgian (spoken in the former Soviet republic of Georgia) is often termed an ergative language, but it shows many complications of this basic pattern, including active alignment in some verb paradigms.Tsova-Tush, a Caucasian language is an active language. According to Holisky (1987), there are 31 intransitive verbs where the argument is always marked as patientive and which refer to uncontrollable states ("be hungry", "tremble", etc.), and 78 intransitve verbs with an agentive argument ("walk", "talk", "think"). These form a split-S subset of the verbs. The rest of the verbs form a fluid-S system; for instance, a single verb root can be interpreted as "slip" when used with a patientive argument, and as "slide" with an agentive argument.
Guaraní, a South American native language spoken mainly in Paraguay, has been analyzed as a close-to-ideal active language of the fluid-S type. In Mesoamerica the Oto-Manguean languages Chochotec and Amuzgo are active languages of the split-S type, with some verbs showing fluid-S alignment. Among North American languages, Chickasaw (see: pronominal affixes), Lakhota and many others also show active alignment.
The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language shows many features known to correlate with active alignment, among them the animate vs. inanimate distinction, related to the distinction between active and inactive or stative verb arguments. Even in its descendant languages there are traces of a morphological split between volitional and nonvolitional verbs, such as a pattern in verbs of perception and cognition where the argument takes an oblique case, a relic of which can be seen in English methinks.
See also
References
- Holisky, Dee Ann. 1987. The case of the intransitive subject in Tsova-Tush (Batsbi). Lingua 71.103-32.
- Dixon, Robert M. W. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55.59-138.
External links
- Active languages, by Daniel Andréason, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University
Linguistic Typology is an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of linguistic typology, founded in 1997. It is published by Mouton de Gruyter on behalf of the Association for Linguistic Typology. Its editor-in-chief is Prof. Frans Plank (University of Konstanz).
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Morphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world (see linguistic typology) that groups languages according to their common morphological structures.
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This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers.
Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
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Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
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A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as fusional, agglutinative, etc.
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fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to "squish together" many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment.
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An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view.
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Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes.
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Definition
The degree of synthesis refers to the morpheme-to-word ratio. Languages with more than one morpheme per word are synthetic...... Click the link for more information.
An oligosynthetic language (from the Greek ὀλίγος, meaning "few" or "little") is any language using very few morphemes, perhaps only a few hundred, which combine synthetically to form statements.
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In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word
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A nominative-accusative language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of transitive verbs distinguishing them from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs.
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An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.
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Ergative vs.
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Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment that combines features of ergative and accusative languages.
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A tripartite language, also called an ergative-accusative language, is one that treats the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb each in different ways.
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A direct-inverse language is a language where clauses with transitive verbs can be expressed either using a direct or an inverse construction. The direct construction is used when the subject of the transitive clause outranks the object in saliency or animacy but the
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The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve", in a given language. This usually means the following:
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- If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot.
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theta role or θ-role is the formal device for representing syntactic argument structure (the number and type of noun phrases) required syntactically by a particular verb. For example, the verb put requires three arguments (i.e., it is ditransitive).
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In linguistic typology, word order is the order in which words appear in sentences. In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions.
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In linguistics, a VO language is a language in which the verb typically comes before the object (thus including SVO, VOS and VSO languages). It was W.P. Lehmann who first proposed to reduce the six possible permutations of word order to just two main ones, VO and OV, in
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In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO), is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements.
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Verb Subject Object (VSO) is a term in linguistic typology. It represents one type of languages when classifying languages according to the sequence of these constituents in neutral expressions: Ate Sam oranges.
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In linguistic typology, Verb Object Subject or Verb Object Agent - commonly used in its abbreviated form VOS or VOA - represents the language-classification type in which the following sequence of the three constituents, in neutral expressions, is
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In linguistics, an OV language is a language in which the object comes before the verb. They are primarily left-branching, or head-final, i.e. heads are often found at the end of their phrases, with a resulting tendency to have the adjectives before nouns, to place
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In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence.
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Object Subject Verb (OSV) or Object Agent Verb (OAV) is one of the permutations of expression used in Linguistic typology. OSV or OAV denotes the sequence "Object Subject Verb" in neutral expressions: Oranges Sam ate.
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Object Verb Subject (OVS) or Object Verb Agent (OVA) is one of the permutations of expression used in linguistic typology. OVS denotes the sequence 'Object Verb Subject' in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses.
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Time Manner Place (TMP) describes one possible ordering of adpositional phrases in sentences.
Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
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- Example: ... yesterday, by car, to the store.
Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
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Place Manner Time is a term used in linguistic typology to state the general order of adpositional phrases in a language's sentences: "to the store by car yesterday". It would seem that it is common among SVO languages. English, French, and Spanish belong to this category.
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A syntactic verb argument, in linguistics, is a phrase that appears in a relationship with the verb in a clause. Typical syntactic arguments are the subject and the direct object, which are usually termed "core arguments".
Arguments can be optional or compulsory.
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Arguments can be optional or compulsory.
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intransitive verb is a verb that does have a subject and does not have an object. In more technical terms, an intransitive verb has only one argument (its subject), and hence has a valency of one.
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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:
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- Kyle sees Adam. (Adam is the direct object of "sees")
- You lifted the bag.
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