Information about Nominative Accusative Language
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.
If the language has morphological case, then the direct object is marked with a case conventionally known as "accusative", while the subject is marked with another case called "nominative". If there's no case marking, the language can resort to word order (for example, the subject comes before the verb and the object comes after it, as in English).
The nominative form is usually the most unmarked form of a word, and the form that is used as the lemma. However, this does not shield it from other sound changes than marking, e.g. Finnish lemma vete- with the regular nominative vesi.
| Agent | Patient | |
|---|---|---|
| Transitive verbs | Nominative | Accusative |
| Intransitive verbs | Nominative | Nominative |
Examples
Germanic and Romance languages, as well as the majority of other languages in the world, are nominative-accusative. English has no morphological case distinction between nominative and accusative, except for the pronouns, and it relies solely on word order to differentiate subject and object. The same applies to the Romance languages. German retains case marking, most notably applied to articles.Consider German:
- Der Junge kam. "The boy arrived."
- Der Mann sah den Jungen. "The man saw the boy."
Der and den both mean "the". The form of the definite article changes according to both the grammatical gender and quantity of the noun it applies to, and also according to the case (accusative or dative) prescribed by a transitive verb for its objects.
The subject of the sentence, Mann, is placed in the nominative case. Der is the nominative singular masculine article.
In the second example sentence, the verb sah (past form of sehen), like the majority of German transitive verbs, prescribes the accusative case for its object. Thus, the definite article is changed to den, for a masculine singular word (Jungen) in the accusative case.
To highlight the use morphological marking over positioning, consider an additional German example:
- Der Mann isst den Kuchen. "The man eats the cake."
- Den Kuchen isst der Mann. Also "The man eats the cake", and not, as one might mistakenly assume "The cake eats the man".
Note that even though the subject and object are inverted, the meaning of the sentence stays the same because morphological marking is used to distinguish between the nominative and the accusative cases.
Old English had a similar system to German, which gradually disappeared from use (see declension in English).
Baltic-Finnic languages have two cases that are used for marking the morphosyntactic accusative. The Finnish accusative case is always telic; the object (and thus the action) is finished, a "total object", and may not be referenced again by the same action. The partitive case may appear contrastively in the same position as the accusative, and indicates an atelic object, which may be referenced again for the same action. (The partitive, however, appears in other contexts.) For example, Kirjoitin artikkelin "I wrote an article (completely)" has the word artikkeli in the (telic) accusative, indicating that the article is complete; and Kirjoitin artikkelia has the word artikkeli in the partitive, indicating that the result is not known (may or may not be completed).
See also
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).
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Morphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world (see linguistic typology) that groups languages according to their common morphological structures.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
Ergative vs.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
An active-stative language, or active language for short, is one in which the sole 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
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve", in a given language. This usually means the following:
..... Click the link for more information.
- If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot.
..... Click the link for more information.
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).
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
- Example: ... yesterday, by car, to the store.
Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
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.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.
A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
..... Click the link for more information.
An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. As an example, the following sentence is given:
In the sentence "Bobby kicked the ball
..... Click the link for more information.
In the sentence "Bobby kicked the ball
..... Click the link for more information.
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:
..... Click the link for more information.
- Kyle sees Adam. (Adam is the direct object of "sees")
- You lifted the bag.
..... Click the link for more information.
This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus
