 an ergativeâabsolutive language (or simply an ergative language) is a language 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. for instance, instead of saying "i moved her" and "she moved", speakers of an ergative language would say the equivalent of "i moved her" and "her moved". ==ergative vs. accusative languages== an ergative language maintains a syntactic or morphological equivalence (such as the same word order or grammatical case) for the object of a transitive verb and the single core argument of an intransitive verb, while treating the agent of a transitive verb differently. this contrasts with nominativeâaccusative languages such as english, where the single argument of an intransitive verb and the agent of a transitive verb (both called the subject) are treated alike and kept distinct from the object of a transitive verb.   these different arguments are usually symbolized as follows: * o = object of transitive verb (also symbolized as p for "patient") * s = core argument of intransitive verb * a = agent of transitive verb the relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following: {| class="wikitable" cellpadding="5" | &nbsp; ! ergativeâabsolutive ! nominativeâaccusative |- | a | erg | nom |- | s | abs | nom |- | o | abs | acc |} see morphosyntactic alignment for a more technical explanation and a comparison with nominativeâaccusative languages. note that the word subject, as it is typically defined in grammars of nominativeâaccusative languages, is inapplicable when referring to ergativeâabsolutive languages, or when discussing morphosyntactic alignment in general. ergative languages tend to be either verb-final or verb-initial; there are few, if any, ergative svo-languages.http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~asw/lab/lab87/lab87_lahne.pdf ==realization of ergativity== ergativity can be found in both morphological and syntactic behavior. ===morphological ergativity=== if the language has morphological case, then the verb arguments are marked thus: *the agent of a transitive verb (a) is marked as ergative case, or as a similar case such as oblique. *the core argument 
Linguistic_typology