Formulating a definition of ergativity

I became a huge fan of ergativity while I was studying linguistics at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf and later at Université de Liège. One thing that started to bother me after digging deeper into the linguistic literature about this fascinating topic was the lack of a precise definition of the term. It seemed to me that linguists randomly applied the term "ergativity" to all kinds of phenomena that had little or nothing in common. I decided to formulate a precise definition that takes into account all ergative patterns that have been discovered in the past, but at the same time draws a clear line around the concept.

About the paper "Ergativity - A Definition"

The main problem discussed in the paper "Ergativity - A Definition" is the lack of a precise definition of the term "ergativity" in linguistics. The starting point of the discussion is a traditional definition of ergativity by Comrie, which is then modified based on the further observations made while the discussion advances, taking into account some terminological problems that arise around the description of the linguistic data that is investigated.

The discussion deals with linguistic data from languages from all of the six continents, giving a total of 19 languages, 18 of them belonging to 13 different language families, one being an isolated language. No particular linguistic theory or model is defended in this paper. The linguistic data and the theoretical problems that are dealt with are described using a terminology that most linguists will be able to agree with.

About this website

I decided to publish this paper on the internet in case it might be interesting for other linguists that are working on ergativity. The PDF version was converted to HTML using the PDF to HTML converter by INVESTINTECH.COM (thanks for this great tool). Please note that there might be some minor formatting issues with the "read the paper on-line" (HTML) version. You can refer to the PDF version for a 100% reliable source. If you have any questions or comments about this website or the paper, please get in contact with me.