Active language
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| Linguistic typology |
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| Morphological typology |
| Analytic language |
| Synthetic language |
| Fusional language |
| Agglutinative language |
| Polysynthetic language |
| Oligosynthetic language |
| Morphosyntactic alignment |
| Theta role |
| Syntactic pivot |
| Nominative-accusative language |
| Ergative-absolutive language |
| Active language |
| Tripartite language |
| Time Manner Place |
| Place Manner Time |
| Subject Verb Object |
| Subject Object Verb |
| Verb Subject Object |
| Verb Object Subject |
| Object Subject Verb |
| Object Verb Subject |
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An active language is one where the only argument of an intransitive verb (that is, the subject) is marked sometimes in the same way as the subject of a transitive verb, and some other times in the same way as the direct object of a transitive verb. Thus, the marking of the intransitive subject, often called experiencer or S, varies according to certain criteria defined by each given language. The criteria tend to be based of the degree of volition or control of the verbal action by the subject.
For most languages of this type, the marking of the intransitive subject is fixed for each verb, regardless of the actual degree of volition of the subject, but often corresponding to the most common occasions. For example, the subject of swim is always treated like the transitive subject (agent-like), and the subject of sleep is always treated like the transitive direct object (patient-like). In a language like this, if the subject of a verb like swallow is defined as agentive, it will be always marked so, even the action of swallowing is involuntary. This subtype is known as split-S.
In a few other languages, the marking of the intransitive subject is decided by the speaker "on the spot" based on semantic considerations. That is, for any given intransitive verb the speaker may choose whether to mark the subject as agentive or patientive, with agentive marking implying a degree of volition (agent-like behaviour), and patientive implying lack of volition or control. This subtype is known as fluid-S.
If the language has morphological case, then the arguments of a transitive verb are marked using the agentive case for the subject and the patientive case for the object, while the argument of an intransitive verb is marked as either one.
Languages lacking case inflections may indicate case with different word orders, using adpositions, etc.. For example, the patientive argument might precede the verb, while the agentive argument follows.
Crosslinguistically, the agentive argument tends to be marked, and the patientive argument tends to be the least marked. That is, if a case is marked by zero-inflection, it is often the patientive.
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Terminology
Active languages are a relatively new field of study; in other times active alignment was not recognized as such, and was mostly treated as an interesting deviation from the standard alternatives (nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive). Besides, active languages are few, and they often show complications and special cases ("pure" active alignment is an ideal). Therefore, the terminology used to describe them is rather flexible. Active languages are also termed active-stative or even nominative-absolutive. The terms agentive case and patientive case used above are descriptive, but not standard, since every language may use different ones.
The names of the subtypes (split-S and fluid-S) come from the designation of the single argument of intransitive verbs as S. They were first used by R. M. W. Dixon in 1979. Less abbreviated forms would be split intransitive subject and fluid intransitive subject. Since the other typical core arguments are termed A (transitive subject) and O (transitive primary object), active languages can be described as languages which align S = O or S = A according to the criteria explained above (and contrasting to accusative alignment, S = A, and to ergative alignment, S = O).
Examples of active languages
Georgian (spoken in the former Soviet republic of Georgia) is often termed an ergative language, but it shows many complications of this basic pattern, including active alignment in some verb paradigms.
Tsova-Tush (a Caucasian language) is an active language. According to Holinsky (1987), there are 31 verbs where the subject is always marked as patientive and refer to uncontrollable states ("be hungry", "tremble", etc.), and 78 verbs with an agentive subject ("walk", "talk", "think"); these form a split-S set (the marking of the subject is fixed). The rest of the verbs form a fluid-S system; for instance, a single verb root can be interpreted as "slip" when used with a patientive subject, and as "slide" with an agentive subject.
Guaraní (a South American native language spoken mainly in Paraguay) has been analyzed as a close-to-ideal active language of the fluid-S type. Among North American languages, Chickasaw, Lakhota and many others also show active alignment.
The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language shows many features known to correlate with active alignment, among them the animate vs. inanimate distinction (related to the distinction between active and inactive/stative verb arguments), and even in its descendant languages there are traces of a morphological split between volitional and nonvolitional verbs (such as a pattern in perception or "thinking" verbs where the semantic subject is in an oblique case).
References
- Holinsky, Dee Ann. 1987. The case of the intransitive subject in Tsova-Tush (Batsbi). Lingua 71.103-32.
- Dixon, Robert M. W. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55.59-138.
External links
- Active languages (http://www.ling.su.se/gu/kursmaterial/311_4/active.pdf), by Daniel Andréason, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University
