0 used to refer to a verb that can be transitive (= used with an object) or intransitive (= used without an object), with the object of the transitive verb used as the subject of the intransitive verb. For example, close is an ergative verb (I closed the door| The door closed): --
Ergative is the case marking transitive subject.
Grammatical features such as ergative pronouns can be detected.
Ergative verbs are both transitive and intransitive.
1 an ergative verb: --
The behaviour of unergative verbs contrasts sharply with that of ergative ones and is clearly in line with our analysis.
In the ergative, the trapped suffix -n of the host noun was lost.
This would give information to a child as to the argument structure of the verb : the verb would require an ergative subject.
The omission of ergative case was productive in ten of the twenty bilingual subjects of this study.
This name is more difficult to explain morphologically because the grammatical features such as ergative pronouns cannot be detected.
Lexical verbs may be transitive (29a, b), ergative (29c, d), and intransitive (29e).
If the trapped ergative case marker had been lost for phonotactic reasons, we would expect it to have been retained at least in vowel-final stems.
My claim is that the difficulty that children have in producing ergative case is a morphological one.
