Appendix talk:English ergative verbs
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Appendix:English ergative verbs, Category:English ergative verbs - confusion with ambitransitive verbs (verbs that have both transitive and intransitive senses)[edit]
The explanation in the appendix of what an "English ergative verb" is doesn't jive with other explanations of ergativity, such as at w:Ergative–absolutive language. In the sentence, “The boat sank,” the boat is definitely not the PATIENT as the example at Appendix:English ergative verbs currently indicates -- it is instead the agent or actor doing the sinking, and sank in this instance is just a plain old intransitive verb. In the sentence, “This book reads well,” or in “These eggs eat well,” the book or the eggs are clearly not the actors -- semantically, they can't be, outside of very strange and possibly drug-induced circumstances. This is the closest to an actual ergative construction in English, where a semantic object is used in the syntactic subject position (and, when using pronouns that make case explicit like he - him or she - her, the pronoun would be in the nominative case). This matches the definition we currently give in our entry at ergative. This also appears to match what is described in the w:Ergative–absolutive language article, where the semantic object is treated grammatically with the same case and syntax as a subject. This is notably different from the content of the flawed and unsourced w:Ergative verb article, which appears to be rehashing a description of patientive ambitransitive verbs that is presented more clearly and with citations at w:Ambitransitive verb#Patientive.
Moreover, although ergative constructions would seem to exist in English, “ergative” as a label is just not very useful in describing English verbs: although generally only useful for describing the qualities of how the noun verbs, as in the examples above with books and eggs, basically any semantically transitive verb can be used in an ergative construction just by putting the object of the verb's action into the subject slot in the syntax of the sentence. Ergativity is not a feature of English verbs, so much as English syntax.
As such, I propose that we delete both Appendix:English ergative verbs and Category:English ergative verbs. We should probably also delete Category:Old English ergative verbs as well.
Looking at some of the other ergative categories, like Category:Low_German_ergative_verbs or Category:Mandarin ergative verbs, I find that they mostly have descriptions like “[LANGUAGE] intransitive verbs that become causatives when used transitively.” This does not agree with the sense of ergative that I'm familiar with, nor does it even always agree with the entries so labeled, giving me serious doubts about the validity of these categories. However, I will leave that to the respective editing communities. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 23:51, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
- Gee, I thought the problem with the ergative label was just that normal users don't understand the word. Apparently some contributors who add the label to definitions don't either. DCDuring TALK 01:25, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
- Keep. Ergative verbs are a useful category, and can't simply be replaced by "transitive and intransitive" because they're not the same. Ergative verbs are passive or middle voice when used intransitively, but when used transitively the meaning flips to that of a causative, to make the object undergo the intransitive sense. For example, "the boat sinks" is intransitive and does not have a clear agent. But when you say "the storm sinks the boat", then the storm is acting as an agent on the boat. In Dutch, the intransitive use has a passive/stative perfect construction too, whereas the transitive use has an active construction. —CodeCat 18:33, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
- I'm fine with ergative as a label for other languages, provided those editors have a use for it.
- My primary concerns are that 1) I don't see this as a useful label for English, and 2) this use of ergative to refer to a special kind of intransitive-and-causative verb usage does not agree with either our definitions at ergative, or the way the term is employed in other linguistic contexts (viz. the w:Ergative–absolutive language article). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 21:53, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
- I think the single definition at ergative is meant to encompass both the ergative case and the ergative verb, though it is really not very clear. The specific meanings of the term when applied to nominals and when applied to verbs should be elaborated more. — Eru·tuon 03:01, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
- I always thought that ergative verbs (in English) were as defined here and here, which, as far as I have observed, is how the label is used (or intended to be used) at Wiktionary. Therefore, I don't see a problem, unless the label is seen as too technical for readers. I don't understand the comment above that "any semantically transitive verb can be used in an ergative construction just by putting the object of the verb's action into the subject slot in the syntax of the sentence". That would mean that "John loves Mary" should mean the same as "Mary loves (John)", wouldn't it? Mihia (talk)
- @Mihia: -- The definitions you linked to provide senses that are indistinguishable from the more widely used descriptor, ambitransitive, or simply by stating that a given verb is both transitive and intransitive. For this sense, using the term ergative instead only invites confusion. As described by others at [[w:Talk:Ergative_verb#Not_standard_usage_in_linguistics]], this usage of ergative appears to have arisen out of confusion, and usage of this sense also appears to be limited to a narrow subset of fields that use the term (perhaps just ESL?). In light of these issues, I see no usefulness and too much potential for user confusion were we to use ergative as a label for any and all English verbs that are both transitive and intransitive, such as boil in “he boils the water” and “the water boils”.
- Cases where ergative actually starts to make sense for English outside of the confused ambitransitive sense are cases where the verb itself is semantically transitive, and is used in an intransitive grammatical construction where the grammatical subject of the verb is also the semantic patient of the action, and the semantic agent is left unstated. Restating from a separate thread, over at [[User_talk:Eirikr#Discussion_of_ergatives_and_perfect_tense_in_Germanic]]:
<...snip...>
- ... words like melt and sink and grow cannot usefully or correctly be described as ergative. For a sentence like "the boat sinks, there is no ... agent that is making this happen. The action in question "happens by itself". These words are fundamentally [semantically] intransitive, where the modern EN transitive uses have developed from a causative sense.
- This is not to say that separate causative and passive constructions could not also exist. Compare:
- The ice melts. -- intransitive
- The ice is being melted by her. -- passive
- She melts the ice. -- transitive
- She makes the ice melt. -- causative
- Semantically, in the kinds of environments that humans have historically found themselves, actions like melting and freezing are precisely the kinds of actions that "happen by themselves". There doesn't need to be any actor causing the action of "melting" to happen. Similarly for freeze, sink, grow, etc.
- Meanwhile, the description of "ergative" could apply quite well to verbs that are semantically inherently transitive, such as cook. "Cooking" is not something that naturally happens by itself in the kinds of environments that humans have historically found themselves; this action requires an agent, an actor. This could be something inanimate, such as "heat", but the verb semantically requires someone or something to carry out the action. Note that there is no similar causative for such verbs, precisely because there is no semantically intransitive sense. When used causatively, the implication is that A causes B to do something transitively to C.
- He cooks the eggs. -- transitive
- *He makes the eggs cook. -- unnatural, incorrect causative
- He makes him cook the eggs. -- causative, still transitive
- The eggs are being cooked by him. -- passive
- The eggs cook. -- ergative
- This last instance is where the "ergative" label finally makes sense, as I've understood your [CodeCat's] description and the description in the WP article [at w:Ergative_verb]. This could also be analyzed as a kind of passive construction where the actor carrying out the transitive action is left unstated.
- However, this kind of ergative usage is mostly a matter of English syntax, which would further limit the usefulness of this term as a label. Per utramque cavernam had a good breakdown regarding transitivity, intransitivity, and ergativity in an English verb context over at [[User_talk:DCDuring#parse]].
- HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 19:51, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
- I object to the label, as it is not part of any US education other than some formal education in FLs and linguistics. If we had different labels for users of different preferences, I'd be down with "ergative" as a label, as long as it was not the default.
- As to the category and appendices, I personally don't care, but they are probably useful to some. DCDuring TALK 22:27, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
- Kept all by default after 5 years with no discussion MooreDoor (talk) 23:59, 21 November 2021 (UTC)