Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics

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Ergativity and Unaccusativity
(4,058 words)

The main goal of this lemma is to summarize how the term “ergativity” has been used in analyzing aspects of Chinese syntax. In the typological literature, “ergativity” typically refers to the patterning of transitive objects with intransitive subjects for the purposes of case-marking and certain syntactic operations like relative clause formation. The term “ergativit…

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Edith ALDRIDGE, “Ergativity and Unaccusativity”, in: Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, General Editor Rint Sybesma. Consulted online on 27 March 2023 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_000173>
First published online: 2015



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