Ergative and nominative in English

Abstract

Consider the following two sentences: (i) a. This man cut the bread b. This man fell In both cases, many traditional accounts (e.g. Zandvoort, 1961: 236–240; Scheurweghs, 1959: 1–19; Chomsky, 1962: 138–140, 1965: 63–64; etc.) would say that we have a single clause (or sentence) which consists of two parts, a subject and a predicate. And the two examples differ in the constitution of the predicate. This distinction between the two is usually described as having to do with transitivity. In (i.a) the verb is said to take an object, and is therefore transitive; in (i.b) this is not the case, and the verb is intransitive.

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