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THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION AS ONE POSSIBILITY FOR PATIENT ACTUALIZATION
Author(s) -
Asatiani Rusudan
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
studia linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.187
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-9582
pISSN - 0039-3193
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9582.1991.tb00821.x
Subject(s) - verb , transitive relation , ergative case , linguistics , meaning (existential) , subject (documents) , reflexive verb , relation (database) , semantic role labeling , psychology , causative , modal verb , computer science , philosophy , mathematics , sentence , combinatorics , database , psychotherapist , library science
A general semantic relation is the orientation to patient for transitive verb objects, and to agent for intransitive verb subjects, e. g. if we have the general meaning of ‘moving’ (intransitive semantics), and the subject is a man, the verb will be goes; for the subject a bird, the verb becomes flies, and so on. When, however, the general meaning is intransitive (e. g. ‘creating’), the patient (and not the agent) influences the lexical form of the verb: a letter→ to write, a picture→to draw, a house→to build, etc.