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In grammar, the absolutive case is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative–accusative languages such as English.
Case roles, according to the work by Charles J. Fillmore (1967), are the semantic roles of noun phrases (NP) in relation to the syntactic structures that contain these noun phrases. The term case role is most widely used for purely semantic relations, including theta roles and thematic roles, that can be independent of the morpho-syntax. The concept of case roles is related to the larger notion of Case, which is defined as a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of semantic or syntactic relationship they bear to their heads. Case traditionally refers to inflectional marking.
Mam is a Mayan language spoken by about half a million Mam people in the Guatemalan departments of Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Retalhuleu, and the Mexican states of Campeche and Chiapas. Thousands more make up a Mam diaspora throughout the United States and Mexico, with notable populations living in Oakland, California and Washington, D.C. The most extensive Mam grammar is Nora C. England's A grammar of Mam, a Mayan language (1983), which is based on the San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán dialect of Huehuetenango Department.
In linguistic typology, split ergativity is a feature of certain languages where some constructions use ergative syntax and morphology, but other constructions show another pattern, usually nominative–accusative. The conditions in which ergative constructions are used vary among different languages.
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments of transitive verbs like the dog chased the cat, and the single argument of intransitive verbs like the cat ran away. English has a subject, which merges the more active argument of transitive verbs with the argument of intransitive verbs, leaving the object distinct; other languages may have different strategies, or, rarely, make no distinction at all. Distinctions may be made morphologically, syntactically, or both.
In linguistic typology, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the single argument ("subject") of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent ("subject") of a transitive verb. Examples include Basque, Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, and certain Indo-European languages. It has also been attributed to the Semitic modern Aramaic languages. Ergative languages are classified into two groups: those that are morphologically ergative but syntactically behave as accusative and those that, on top of being ergative morphologically, also show ergativity in syntax. No language has been recorded in which both the morphological and syntactical ergative are present. Languages that belong to the former group are more numerous than those to the latter. Dyirbal is said to be the only representative of syntactic ergativity, yet it displays accusative alignment with certain pronouns.
In linguistic typology, nominative–accusative alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which subjects of intransitive verbs are treated like subjects of transitive verbs, and are distinguished from objects of transitive verbs in basic clause constructions. Nominative–accusative alignment can be coded by case-marking, verb agreement and/or word order. It has a wide global distribution and is the most common alignment system among the world's languages. Languages with nominative–accusative alignment are commonly called nominative–accusative languages.
Greenlandic is an Eskimo–Aleut language with about 57,000 speakers, mostly Greenlandic Inuit in Greenland. It is closely related to the Inuit languages in Canada such as Inuktitut. It is the most widely spoken Eskimo–Aleut language. In June 2009, the government of Greenland, the Naalakkersuisut, made Greenlandic the sole official language of the autonomous territory, to strengthen it in the face of competition from the colonial language, Danish. The main variety is Kalaallisut, or West Greenlandic. The second variety is Tunumiit oraasiat, or East Greenlandic. The language of the Inughuit of Greenland, Inuktun or Polar Eskimo, is a recent arrival and a dialect of Inuktitut.
Warrongo is an Australian Aboriginal language, one of the dozen languages of the Maric branch of the Pama–Nyungan family. It was formerly spoken by the Warrongo people in the area around Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Its last native speaker was Alf Palmer, who died in 1981.
In linguistic typology, active–stative alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the sole argument ("subject") of an intransitive clause is sometimes marked in the same way as an agent of a transitive verb but other times in the same way as a direct object. Languages with active–stative alignment are often called active languages.
In linguistic typology, marked nominative alignment is an unusual type of morphosyntactic alignment similar to, and often considered a subtype of, a nominative–accusative alignment. In a prototypical nominative–accusative language with a grammatical case system like Latin, the object of a verb is marked for accusative case, and the subject of the verb may or may not be marked for nominative case. The nominative, whether or not it is marked morphologically, is also used as the citation form of the noun. In a marked nominative system, on the other hand, it is the nominative case alone that is usually marked morphologically, and it is the unmarked accusative case that is used as the citation form of the noun. The unmarked accusative is typically also used with a wide range of other functions that are associated with the nominative in nominative-accusative languages; they often include the subject complement and a subject moved to a more prominent place in the sentence in order to express topic or focus.
In linguistic typology, tripartite alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the main argument ('subject') of an intransitive verb, the agent argument ('subject') of a transitive verb, and the patient argument of a transitive verb are each treated distinctly in the grammatical system of a language. This is in contrast with nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive alignment languages, in which the argument of an intransitive verb patterns with either the agent argument of the transitive or with the patient argument of the transitive. Thus, whereas in English, "she" in "she runs" patterns with "she" in "she finds it", and an ergative language would pattern "she" in "she runs" with "her" in "he likes her", a tripartite language would treat the "she" in "she runs" as morphologically and/or syntactically distinct from either argument in "he likes her".
Georgian grammar has many distinctive and extremely complex features, such as split ergativity and a polypersonal verb agreement system.
Hindustani, the lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan, has two standardised registers: Hindi and Urdu. Grammatical differences between the two standards are minor but each uses its own script: Hindi uses Devanagari while Urdu uses an extended form of the Perso-Arabic script, typically in the Nastaʿlīq style.
A direct case is a grammatical case used with all three core relations: both the agent and patient of transitive verbs and the argument of intransitive verbs, though not always at the same time. The direct case contrasts with other cases in the language, typically oblique or genitive.
In linguistics, volition is a concept that distinguishes whether the subject, or agent of a particular sentence intended an action or not. Simply, it is the intentional or unintentional nature of an action. Volition concerns the idea of control and for the purposes outside of psychology and cognitive science, is considered the same as intention in linguistics. Volition can then be expressed in a given language using a variety of possible methods. These sentence forms usually indicate that a given action has been done intentionally, or willingly. There are various ways of marking volition cross-linguistically. When using verbs of volition in English, like "want" or "prefer", these verbs are not expressly marked. Other languages handle this with affixes, while others have complex structural consequences of volitional or non-volitional encoding.
Canela is a dialect of the Canela-Krahô language, a Timbira variety of the Northern Jê language group spoken by the Apànjêkra (Apaniêkrá) and by the Mẽmõrtũmre in Maranhão, Brazil.
Mẽbêngôkre, sometimes referred to as Kayapó is a Northern Jê language spoken by the Kayapó and the Xikrin people in the north of Mato Grosso and Pará in Brazil. There are around 8,600 native speakers since 2010 based on the 2015 Ethnologue 18th edition. Due to the number of speakers and the influence of Portuguese speakers, the language stands at a sixth level of endangerment; in which the materials for literacy and education in Mẽbêngôkre are very limited.
In generative linguistics, Burzio's generalization is the observation that a verb can assign a theta role to its subject position if and only if it can assign an accusative case to its object. Accordingly, if a verb does not assign a theta role to its subject, then it does not assign accusative case to its object. The generalization is named after Italian linguist Luigi Burzio, based on work published in the 1980s, but the seeds of the idea are found in earlier scholarship. The generalization can be logically written in the following equation:
θ ↔ A Where: θ = Subject Theta Role A = Accusative Case
In linguistic typology, nominative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the sole argument of an intransitive verb shares some coding properties with the agent argument of a transitive verb and other coding properties with the patient argument of a transitive verb. It is typically observed in a subset of the clause types of a given language.
References
McCarthy, John. 1981. A prosodic theory of non-concatenative morphology. Linguistic Inquiry 12:373-418. PDF download available at author's university site.
Sadock, Jerrold. 1985. Autolexical Syntax. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3:379-440.
Yip, Moira; Joan Maling; and Ray Jackendoff. 1987. Case in Tiers. Language June 1987, 63(2):217-250. JSTOR stable URL
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