 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Absolutive case" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(May 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Ingrammar, theabsolutive case (abbreviatedABS) is the case of nouns inergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects ofintransitive verbs or the objects oftransitive verbs in the translational equivalents ofnominative–accusative languages such asEnglish.[1]
In languages withergative–absolutive alignment, the absolutive is the case used to mark both the subject of anintransitive verb and the object of atransitive verb in addition to being used for the citation form of a noun. It contrasts with the markedergative case, which marks the subject of a transitive verb.
For example, inBasque the nounmutil'boy' takes the bare singulararticle-a both as the subject of the intransitive clausemutila etorri da ('the boy came') and as the object of the transitive clauseIrakasleak mutila ikusi du ('the teacher has seen the boy') in which the agent bears the ergative ending-a-k.
In a very few cases, a marked absolutive has been reported, including inNias andSochiapam Chinantec.
Occasionally, the term 'absolutive case' (or also: 'absolute case') is used for the unmarked case form in languages with other alignment types. This is especially common in the tradition ofdescriptive linguistics ofAfrican languages. Inmarked nominative languages, where the nominative has case inflection, the accusative is unmarked and also serves as citation form. In these languages, the unmarked accusative/citation form is thus often called 'absolutive'. On the other hand, in certainnominative–accusative languages, it is the accusative which is explicitly marked for case, whereas the nominative is unmarked and serves as citation form. In such situations, the term 'absolutive' is occasionally used to describe the unmarked nominative/citation form.[2]
Intripartite languages, both the agent and object of a transitive clause have case forms, ergative and accusative, and the agent of an intransitive clause is the unmarked citation form. It is occasionally called theintransitive case, butabsolutive is also used and is perhaps more accurate since it is not limited to core agents of intransitive verbs.[citation needed]