ergative verb
nounDefinitions
An ambitransitive verb where the patient is the object of the transitive, but becomes the…
An ambitransitive verb where the patient is the object of the transitive, but becomes the experiencer of the intransitive use.
- Break is an ergative verb because when we say "The window broke", the window is the thing getting broken, it is not the vandal.
- Although it is both transitive and intransitive, paint is not an ergative verb, because when we say "Bob paints", this is very different from when we say "Bob gets painted".
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for ergative verb. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA