Agentijnvorm

Agentijnvorm, in linguistic usage, refers to any grammatical form that marks the agent of an action—the doer or initiator of a event. This can be realized in several ways across languages: as a dedicated form on the noun or noun phrase (agentive nouns), as a separate case on the noun, or as a periphrastic construction using prepositions or auxiliary elements. The primary function is to identify the participant responsible for the action, distinct from the patient or theme.

Realizations of agentivity vary cross-linguistically. Some languages create agent nouns by derivational morphology, such as English words like baker or painter, formed with the agentive suffix -er. Dutch likewise uses agent nouns with suffixes like -er or -aar to denote the doer of an action. Other languages encode agency through case marking: in ergative languages, the agent of a transitive verb may appear in an ergative case, while the subject of an intransitive verb remains in an absolutive or other form. In nominative-accusative languages, agency is often expressed by the subject of the verb, sometimes accompanied by a by-phrase in passive constructions. Some languages rely on verbal voice systems (active vs. passive, antipassive) to foreground or background agentivity, rather than a separate noun form.

In linguistic analysis, the agentijnvorm is discussed in relation to voice, case systems, and nominalization. It has implications for syntax, information structure, and translation, influencing how agents are represented in discourse and how agents are reconstructed in historical or typological study. See also agentive constructions, ergativity, and passive voice.