Ergative case

The ergative is the case of the A-argument in transitive clauses if the sole argument in intransitive clauses is assigned the same case as the P-Argument in transitive clauses.

Synonyms
Before the use of ergative in the mid 20th century, other terms were used:
 * German: Nominativ des Handelns (Baskisch, Humboldt 1817:316, quoted in Vollmann n.d.)
 * Nominativ agentis (Kâte, Pilhofer 1933:§122)
 * Narrative (in early literature about Caucasian languages)
 * relative case (in Eskimo linguistics)

Origin
The term ergative first became widespread in the description of Caucasian languages, following Dirr (1928) (see Seely 1977). Dirr picked the term up from Trombetti (1903:173), and Trombetti in turn took it from Schmidt (1902). Schmidt seems to have taken it from Ray & Haddon (1893) (see Manaster-Ramer 1994 for discussion).

Other languages

 * German Ergativ
 * Swedish ergativ (sv)
 * Spanish ergativo