Talk:Ergative–absolutive alignment

message: Can this be considered a consequence of the fact that in Latin the past participle is passive? I remember there were some cases in Lating where the past participle was used in an active meaning. So it seems the -ee form can express two different meanings: passive and/or completion. — Sebastian (T) 19:21, 2005 Apr 24 (UTC) 
I am only an armchair linguist.  But it seems like the behavior of many English verbs, which can be either transitive or intransitive, exhibit something that we might call a "trace of ergativity."  These verbs, when transitive, are of the form s-intrans -- verb -- object, but when one noun element is deleted, they are intransitive verbs with a syntax form s-intrans -- verb, where the intransitive subject is the same as the object of the transitive verb.  For example:
"I grow flowers" vs. "The flowers are growing."
"I hung a painting on my living room wall" vs. "A painting hangs on my living room wall."
"These changes improve my opinion of this painting" vs. "My opinion of this painting improves with age."
"I showed the apartment to the potential tenant" vs. "This apartment shows very well."
I could list a lot of other examples, but you get the picture.  When one noun is deleted from a transitive sentence, with these kinds of verbs, an intransitive sentence is created where the former object of the transitive verb is the subject of the intransitive verb.  Is this not a "trace of Ergativy" in English?
EDIT: I added a sentence referencing the article on ergative verbs.
Kdogg36 23:54, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: They could also be considered causitives, as in 'I boil the spaghetti' or 'I walk the dog'. kwami (talk) 22:39, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Traces of ergativity in English 

message: I am attempting to get a better grip on the exact function/import of ergativity, but this article is too complex for me to dig through. This is my fourth attempt (in over a month) at trying to figure out what the heck it means through this one Wikipedia article. Isn't there some simpler way to state its definition than "An ergative-absolutive language is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs"? I understand what every word of that sentence means. But it is at once thoroughly confusing and also unable to convey the deeper meaning of ergativity. I think it needs some work.
Furthermore, the representation of the ergative vs. accusative section does nothing to elucidate my confusion. I still understand what object/subject/agent mean. But what does the chart represent? Is it saying that the nominative forms of the object are different from those of the accusative in N-A languages? And still, what does it mean? There should be some more thorough examples included in this specific chart. It wouldn't be hard. Just enough to show someone like me what constitutes "different" or "same" once you have made those declarations.
Mind you, I understand a lot about comparative linguistics - though mostly through my own observations and experience - and I am still struggling with the meaning of ergativity, or rather ergativity in contrast with other modes of linguistic expression. Understand very well what transitivity means (i.e. the reason we say "John and I went to the store" instead of "John and me..."). But if someone of my patience and background has trouble understanding the article, doesn't it concern anyone here that other readers/users might have the same troubles?
-z42
:Well, it's a wiki for a reason; if you have thoughts about how to make the article clearer, you should do so. Appealing to others' concernedness makes no sense to me.
:Personally, I think the article explains it rather clearly; whereas nominative-accusative languages (like English) mark the arguments of intransitive verbs (S) the same way as the agents of transitive verbs (A), ergative-absolutive languages mark them the same way as the patients of transitive verbs (O). Whereas English says "I looked around, and I saw him" (using I with both verbs), ergative English would say "Me looked around, and I saw him" (using me with the intransitive verb).
:Ruakh 11:20, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth, I don't have any kind of formal linguistic training, and think that the article is clear as it is. The problem is, of course, that the topic is absolutely abstract and assumes that you've already acquired some familiarity with more basic related topics. This is to be expected, since no article can start from scratch. Maybe more examples would be a good idea, though. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 14:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I dont't understand what you mean with the "John and me"-example. It doesn't really have much to do with transivity. That a verb is transitive means that it has a subject and an object. Eliae 16:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, it seemed that some different concepts were confused. See my note to z42: User talk:Zeppelin42#Ergative morphology. peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm adding a new first paragraph, in hopes of making the lead more accessible to general readers who are curious about this subject....hopefully in line with the WP guidelines on leads. Herbivore (talk) 20:05, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rethinking the Page 

message: In the Split ergativity section, two lines of devanagari Hindi are given, with what I assume is their Latin transliteration below them. But what are the phrases in the boxes; i.e. "Kur pirtûkekê dikire" and "Kurî pirtûkek kirî"? (ps thats is in kurdish/kurmanji " The boy is buying a book" and "The boy bought a book".  This is confusing. 
198.150.76.150 13:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good question. It was added without comment by an unregistered user — http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ergative-absolutive_language&diff=56935397&oldid=54171773 — and hasn't been touched since, probably because no one knew what it was supposed to be. I'll remove it, since right now it's not contributing anything at all to the article; if someone can explain what it is, that might make a difference. Ruakh 15:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Never mind, Pablo-flores beat me to it. :-) Ruakh 15:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hadn't seen your comment. BTW I also took out the devanagari, which is distracting and useless in this context. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 15:21, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Languages used in Split ergativity section 

message: I, too, find this article unnecessarily obtuse.  I'm not a linguist, just someone interested in languages.  However, might it not be more informative to provide examples of ergativity (and accusitivity) from the standpoint of ENGLISH than obscure foreign languages?  Since it's obvious that anyone on this page understands English, wouldn't it make the most sense to provide a framework for a concept based on a common foundation?
The only part of the article I truly understand is the '-ee' example.  Since 'ergativity' must derive from the term for 'work' or 'doer' the concept must have something to do with marking who is doing what.
On the other hand, it would be also helpful if citations were used to provide further help.  The accusative example from what little I know appears to be Japanese, it might be helpful to note that for others who might want to track down Japanese linguistic traits.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.125.95.49 (talk • contribs) .
: English isnt an ergative language. Neither is most of Europe. So, we need to show an example of a language that may be "obscure" to European language speakers (excepting Basque, of course). The concept is as explained in the article. It is easiest to show ergativity by comparing the different case marking patterns in an ergative language and an accusative language with the same word order. English also hardly has case marking either (only pronouns are marked for case). English is not suitable to show ergativity. Japanese and Basque conveniently have SOV word order and case markers that follow the noun.
: The article does state that Japanese is the accusative language example. Sorry. – ishwar  (speak) 21:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi! This being Wikipedia, you should feel free to make changes that you think are helpful. That being said, the problem is that English isn't an ergative-absolutive language. -ee is actually a really bad example of ergativity (it has some ideas in common, but is very different in key ways); the only reason it's included is that it's the closest thing English has. I don't think we can give any more English examples of ergativity. As for accusativity, I think you're right that we should use English rather than Japanese; would you like to start the undertaking of that change? Ruakh 21:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Just thought I'd pitch in and offer a concise explanation of ergativity, based on my admittedly limited understanding of the article. In English and other nominative-accusative languages, the agent/subject is in the same case regardless of whether or not the sentence contains transitive or intransitive verbs. In Basque and other ergative-absolutive languages, the agent/subject is in a different case depending on whether or not the sentence contains transitive or intransitive verbs. Let us pretend for a moment that -ite and -doot are made-up ergative and absolutive case marker suffixes for English. We will use the two example sentences in the article: "The man has arrived" (Intransitive Verb "arrived") and "The man saw the boy" (Transitive Verb "saw"). English - a nominative-accusative language - usually reads like the following: "The mandoot has arrived" (The man is nominated as having arrived), "The mandoot saw the boyite" (The man is nominated as having seen the boy, who stands accused of being seen by the man). An ergative-absolutive English would case-mark the agent/subject separately depending on the presence of a transitive or intransitive verb, like so: "The mandoot has arrived" (The man is in the absolutive case, and is nominated as having arrived), "The manite saw the boydoot" (The boy is in the absolutive case, and is nominated as having been seen by the man in the ergative case, who stands accused of seeing the boy). Even if you change the word order, the marking of the agent and object remain to indicate which is which. "Mandoot has arrived", "Manite boydoot saw". So, that's basically how it works. Ergativity = nominating the subject differently depending on whether the sentence contains a transitive or intransitive verb, unlike a nominative-accusative language which nominates the subject the same way regardless. Either way, it hinges on the nature of the verbs contained in the sentence and how they're applied. Take from that what you will. – A Novice Conlanger 74.94.72.193 (talk) 14:05, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article needs editing! 

message: Can someone please explain the sentence:
'I was given a book'
I wasn't given at all, the book was given.  In Latin, Russian, German etc 'I' in this sentence would be in the dative case.  Why don't we say in English:
'Me was given a book'?
Any ideas?  Does this have anything to do with ergativity?
TAF
:No, nothing to do with ergativity, but rather with animacy. Animate and human things tend to be more central to language than inanimate or non-human things, and it's very common among the world's languages for the sole object of verbs like 'give' to be the recipient rather than the patient. You can see in English that we can have it both ways: "he gave the book to me" (core object = book) --> "the book was given to me", as well as "he gave me the book" (core object = me) --> "I was given the book". A lot of languages are restricted to one or the other of those two options. kwami 22:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are two things going on here. Firstly, English's passive voice can promote direct objects (accusatives), indirect objects (datives), or objects of prepositions (ablatives/prepositional-accusatives); see English passive voice. Secondly, the object so promoted always ends up in the subjective (nominative) case, as in most languages. —RuakhTALK 00:57, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anomolous Passives in English 

message: Note that that article needs help, if anyone here is buff on this term.  MaxEnt (talk) 19:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Linked [[aorist]]

message: The following was in the article: ", and P is indeed more appropriate than is O, because O is biased towards accusative languages. Analogically, it is also defined as Agent of transitive verb below, not as subject. If accusative and ergative languages are to be compared, we need a non-biased terminology, completely omitting subject/object)"
Please refrain from stating what "we" need to do within the actual text of the article, as it is unencyclopedic.--Jeffro77 (talk) 15:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I would welcome a universal terminology mapping to the two (or three, with split ergativity) systems at hand, instead of the two systems being mapped to each other. There are too many words starting with A and subject has always been an awkward term since you always have to think if this is meant syntactically or thematically/narratively. However, bias is often baked into our meanings for the verbs and it is hard to get away from that. I see him. But is seeing inherently something the see-er does to the see-ee? As the photons go, it is the see-ee that does something to the see-er. We might say "stop impinging on my retina" instead of "stop being seen by me." Obviously I understand that syntactic typology is intended to be treated separately of semantics. My point is that this is not always all that simple, or even possible. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:2487:4AE5:1F2C:57A2 (talk) 08:16, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Bias' 

message: Here is the example of hypothetical ergative English from the text:
    I (S) traveled; She (S) traveled.
    Me (A) invited she (O) to go with me; Her (A) invited I (O) to go with her.
I speak a split-ergative language myself, and this seems wrong somehow. I'm no linguist, but it seems to me that what we're saying is this:
    Me (S) sleep; Her (S) sleeps. (travel doesn't give ergative in my language)
    I (A) invited her (O) to go with me; She (A) invited me (O) to go with her.
The (S) in the intransitive sentence "feels" more like an object, and the (A) and (O) in the transitive seems reversed. Perhaps it's just my imagination, but could someone with a bit more linguistic knowledge check this, please? --88.90.165.48 (talk) 21:23, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree that the way you've phrased the example sounds clearer. Anyone have a third opinion over the next week before I throw it in? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 15:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ergative English 

message: This page is nearly unreadable without checking the stupid terminology used here.
67.194.132.91 (talk) 00:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you complain that you aren't familiar with the technical terminology of linguistics, or do you complain that the article misuses terminology? What precise terminology would you prefer that the article use? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 15:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to agree with the unreadability, I'm a language enthusiast trying to get my head around this concept, and I find myself looking up every second word to find out what it means so that I can understand what's being said. This, in my opinion, is not the best way to explain a concept. Whoever is writing this article, I applaud your efforts and your knowledge in this area is obviously quite extensive, but it may help to assume that everyone reading this article has no linguistic experience at all and is reading this as a one-off. Simple, very clearly explained examples are the key here. Regards, Jimzip
Jimzip (talk) 03:48, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The explanation on this page uses too much nonsense jargon 

message: It seems to me that there is a trace of, or shall we say something analogous to, ergativity in English past/passive participles used as adjectives. Specifically, when the participle of a transitive verb is used as an adjective, its noun is the patient -- the recipient of the action -- and the object of the sentence using the active verb :
:He wounded the soldier (transitive) → There is a wounded soldier = a soldier who has been wounded (passive voice)
But when the participle of an intransitive verb is used as an adjective, its noun is also the patient, even though in this case it is the subject of the sentence that uses the active verb:
:The leaves fell (intransitive) → Look at the fallen leaves = leaves that have fallen (present perfect aspect)
If this is right, there must be a reference for it, and it could go in the article as something that an English-only speaker might be able to relate to easily. Duoduoduo (talk) 21:11, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Trace of ergativity in English, redux

message: The morpheme {-a} does not mark the absolutive is a mark of grammatical number, the absolutive in Euskera is marked with ∅, and the ergative with-k, please clarify this.
Reference in Spanish: http://jmacosta.galeon.com/sketch.htm
I'm Lingüistic Student of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, thanks for your attention.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.26.12.229 (talk) 10:36, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe we should. It's a question of precision vs. distracting detail. Maybe a footnote. — kwami (talk) 19:46, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Euskera Error 

message: I eat bread:
*Kurmanji:
Min nan xwar.		
Ez nên (nanî) dixwim.
*Zazaki:
Min nan werd		
Ez nanî wena
--Alsace38 (talk) 12:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kurdish is also ergatif language 

message: Well, I tried to make it easier for English speakers to understand (for instance, replacing early instances of "argument" with "subject", since in English, the argument of an intransitive sentence IS the subject [and it took me 2 hours of MSPaint diagrams to figure that out]), but may have sacrificed complete accuracy in the proccess. The header certainly needed work; you had to look up "argument", and within that page, "predicate", and still didn't understand what you were reading, so I made the changes listed. I also defined the terms "intransitive", "transitive", "agent", and "patient" in the article itself for clarity, so that you won't have to have 5 or 6 tabs open.
I also reversed the "vs" part, just for continuity (so that the whole "A/S/O" thing would flow from the "ergativity" part), but that was just for aesthetics. If it's unsatisfactory, those were all I changed, so just revert my first edit (friggin' coding errors!). 
In other words, I tried. :P
Edit: I have no idea what's wrong with the diagrams. I don't remember touching that part...
74.177.127.125 (talk) 04:03, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree the article is not very reader friendly. Unfortunately, your edit compounded the problem, by substituting difficulty with an error: There are no subjects in ergative languages. (Or, rather, some linguists claim there are, but they can't agree as to which case, ERG or ABS, marks the subject.) That just makes things more difficult down the road, when the reader will need to unlearn what you wrote. — kwami (talk) 04:22, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

text: Maybe an example like that would work (though I'd put the transitive clauses first, and only list the intransitive ones under 'nom' and 'erg'). I'd avoid passives, however: that's a very different problem. — kwami (talk) 05:39, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revision Number 9,001 

message: I couldn't follow the text in the original article (and I'm not a total linguistic incompetent) 
An ip editor ( 86.156.225.35 ) wrote this text above -
I am quite inclined to insert that chunk of text into the article just after the following lines:
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
(here)
If the examples in that quote are correct then I think I now understand what is meant by ergative-absolute language where the article itself was unclear. I don't know how watched this page is, but if I don't see any feedback in the next week I'll go ahead with that change. I'm still not 100% sure what the quote means by the words 'in this context' so expanding on that would be good. Cheers EdwardLane (talk) 08:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this correct ? 

message: Perhaps a sentence diagram could help in comparing this type of language with English. I think we can all agree that the terminology is not easily understood by someone who hasn't otherwise studied the distinction between the language types. Fortunately, a sentence diagram might help communicate what terms mean and how to parse and write in languages other than what we're familiar with. Just because this isn't a "simple English" article doesn't mean that the typical reader of English should decidedly not understand it. Also or alternatively, an article covering the various types of languages should cover some distinctions with a sentence diagram. If there is already such an article, it might help to include an obvious link to that. (I, for one, haven't noticed it if it exists.) --D. F. Schmidt (talk) 15:08, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sentence diagramming 

message: "The Zazaki, Gorani, Sorani, and Kurmanji are the only ergative languages of the Iranian language family."  
But isn't Pashto also an Iranian language (Eastern Iranian, to be exact) which is known to exhibit "split ergativity"?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:304:CC94:6AC0:112:44D9:610D:C7AE (talk) 05:39, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inaccuracy? 

message: For instance, instead of saying "she moved" and "I moved her", speakers of an ergative language would say the equivalent of "her moved" and "I moved her".
This is one way of looking at it, but not the only way. You could equally well say:
 instead of saying "she moved" and "I moved her", speakers of an ergative language would say the equivalent of "she moved" and "by me she moved".
Indeed this is the most obvious way of looking at languages such as Hindi (see Split ergativity) where you have sentences such as laṛke-ne kitāb xarīdī, which might be glossed as 'by boy book (was) bought' (the verb xarīdī here is a feminine participle, agreeing with kitāb 'book'); similarly in Basque (see Basque language) we are told that some verbs are loan-words derived from Latin passive participles ending in -tus, implying that the Basque-speakers who borrowed those participles felt they were the equivalent of verbs in their own language. So I think this formulation in the introduction is possibly rather misleading. It would be better if it were removed. Kanjuzi (talk) 04:37, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that these examples (with "she" and "her") are confusing, and anyone with sufficient linguistic understanding to work out what they mean would more easily understand a more symbolic explanation. Whereas anyone who could not understand a more abstract explanation, will just say "What is 'her moved'? It's just ungrammatical." Just looking at the beginning of the article now, I think that the first paragraph of the main body is easier to understand than the lead, except for being somewhat overloaded with terminology. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:08, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

text: I see that Kanjuzi has now changed the wording to speakers of an ergative language would say the equivalent of "she moved" and "by me moved she". However, that doesn't seem to me to agree with the definition given in the previous sentence at all: that definition says the single argument ("subject") of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, but in Kanjuzi's example, the intransitive example (she moved) is left unchanged, with the subject playing the same role in what Kanjuzi gives as illustrating the ergative case as it does in English, while the example given of a transitive verb makes a change which does not seem to bear any relation whatever to what the opening sentence says. The earlier version, however, does agree with the definition, though it would make more sense to say "moved her", with "her" treated like an English object, rather than "her moved", which can be seen as an ungrammatical use of "her" as a subject. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 09:04, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: I can't see why the title 'Ergative–absolutive language' has a dash in it rather than a hyphen. This punctuation seems to me rather bizarre. But in any case surely the article would be better titled 'Ergative language'; since if you look up the two phrases on Google ngrams ergative language vs. ergative-absolutive language you will see that the phrase 'ergative language' is much more commonly used, in fact it is over 100 times more common. I propose therefore that it should be changed.
Another thing about this article, however, is that it deals only with ergative-absolutive languages and nominative-accusative languages, without mentioning except in one brief sentence that there are also tripartite languages in which all three participants (agent, object, and subject) are in a different case. The reader has to get quite a long way down the article before he or she comes across that sentence. Would it not be less confusing if the two articles 'Ergative-absolutive language' and 'Tripartite language' were merged? It would surely be much better if that rather useful SOA diagram near the beginning of the article were in three parts, one for each of the three possibilities.  Kanjuzi (talk) 05:04, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll just comment on two points. Tripartite languages, together with the other possible alignments, are already in the Linguistic Typology navigation template at the top right. As for the concept of subject being inapplicable to ergative languages, I would disagree. In syntactically ergative languages like Dyirbal it's the absolutive argument that is a subject and in syntactically nominative ones like Hindustani (where case assignment and verb agreement follow a split-ergative pattern), the subject is understood to be the ergative argument (on grounds of anaphora binding, controlling of coreference in dependent clauses, or topic position). The sentence you cite hedges "subject" with "as it is typically defined in grammars of nominative–accusative languages". It might need expanding to make it clear what concepts are relevant for defining subjects. Uanfala (talk) 11:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a good idea - mentioning the concept of anaphora binding (do you mean sentences such as 'John broke the window and ran away'? or if not then what?). The idea that 'subject' is an inapplicable concept isn't mine but the original writer's. I still think that the article would be better if it began first by discussing the difference between Nom-Acc, Erg-Abs, and tripartite languages before going into details about the second of these. And  are tripartite languages included under the heading 'ergative languages'? This isn't clear. Kanjuzi (talk) 12:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think I've inadvertently used a generative term for the reflexives (John is unhappy with himself). But any kind of coreference with pronominals or omitted arguments in clauses (like your example) would be relevant, as far as I can tell. Agreed, the lead could do with a bit more context, at the very least a mention of, and link to, Morphosyntactic alignment.  Uanfala (talk) 13:32, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The alleged third type, "Ergative-accusative", is defined as having ergative-absolutive alignment for nouns and nominative-accusative alignment for pronouns, but the phrase links to the article about tripartite languages, and those are defined in a completely different way, namely as languages that mark the ergative, absolutive and accusative participant in three different ways. I would say that this "third type" with a split between nouns and pronouns is a case of what would normally be called split ergativity, not "ergative-accusative alignment" or "tripartite alignment". --94.155.68.202 (talk) 01:26, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Ergative-accusative" 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 17:30, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: There is, in my opinion, too much jargon in the intro for it to be of any use to most readers (WP:TECHNICAL). If it could be made more accessible (for example by explaining terms), that would be ideal. – Thjarkur (talk) 15:50, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely agree. Ideally, the lead could be much shorter with a shallow technical definition, followed by an intro section that guides the non-expert through simple examples from languages with obvious ergative structure, e.g. Basque. I'll give it a try in the next days. –Austronesier (talk) 17:20, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The intro could be made more accessible 

message: "Ergative languages are classified into 2 groups: those that are morphologically ergative but syntactically behave as accusative (for instance, Basque, Pashto and Urdu) and those that—on top of being ergative morphologically—also show ergativity in syntax."
The phrasing here is unclear in terms of whether languages merely need to show some morphological/syntactical ergativity or be fully ergative in either aspect.
"No language has been recorded in which both the morphological and syntactical ergative are present."
This suggests that languages need in fact be a) fully ergative in morphology, but not at all in syntax (Group 1) or b) fully ergative in both morphology and syntax (Group 2). Hence, Group 2 is empty? But then we get the following sentence:
"Languages that belong to the former group are more numerous than those to the latter."
Alright, so Group 2 isn't empty and what the previous sentence really should have said is "No language has been recorded that is fully ergative in both morphology and syntax." This would then also make more sense with the next sentence, which actually gives an example of a language that shows both forms of ergativity, ergo would fall into Group 2, one would think. So Group 2's inclusion criteria should be "at least partially ergative in both morphology and syntax". And so I assume the same goes for Group 1, which should then be "at least partially ergative in morphology, but not at all in syntax."
"Dyirbal is said to be the only representative of syntactic ergativity, yet it displays accusative alignment with certain pronouns."
So Dyirbal is fully ergative in terms of syntax, but only partially in terms of morphology, hence a Group 2 language, no? In fact, is it the ONLY Group 2 language, as no other languages show at least partial syntactic ergativity per the preceding sentence? 
Suggested rephrasing:
If Dyirbal is actually the only language in Group 2:
"Ergative languages are classified into 2 groups: those that are at least partially ergative in morphology, but fully accusative in syntax (for instance, Basque, Pashto and Urdu) and those that are at least partially ergative in both morphology and syntax. While there is a number of languages that belong to the former group, there is only one that belongs to the latter.  Dyirbal is said to be the only representative of syntactic ergativity, yet is not fully ergative in morphology. No language has been recorded that is fully ergative in both morphology and syntax."
IF Dyirbal is in fact just the only language with FULL syntactic ergativity (so not the only language in Group 2), I would instead rephrase as follows:
"Ergative languages are classified into 2 groups: those that are at least partially ergative in morphology, but fully accusative in syntax (for instance, Basque, Pashto and Urdu) and those that are at least partially ergative in both morphology and syntax. Languages that belong to the former group are more numerous than those to the latter. Dyirbal is said to be the only language that displays full syntactic ergativity, yet it is not fully ergative in morphology. No language has been recorded that is fully ergative in both morphology and syntax." 91.119.53.179 (talk) 16:44, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing/contradictory statements in the intro - which group does Dyirbal belong to? 

message: The examples are heteronormative! 50.227.225.11 (talk) 12:28, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Racism