Fundamentals of morphological-syntactic ergativity

Abstract

The main goal of this research paper is to clarify the concept of ergativity, which has been used as a modern term in recent grammar studies, from a morphological- syntactical approach. This term, nonexistent in the traditional linguistic studies on romance languages, has been newly applied to values of transitivity where the participant roles in the action may or may not have the agent function. latin and his daughter-languages have a syntactical accusative profile where the subject of the action is also the agent, different in form from the direct object. in latin, the correspondence subject-agent is marked morphologically in the nominative case. in ergative languages, the agent is not necessarily marked as the subject but as the direct object; this relation is expressed in various morphological ways depending on the languages.