Agentivelike

Agentivelike is a term used in linguistics and related fields to describe expressions or constructions that convey agency in a manner that resembles agentive meaning without relying on canonical agentive morphology. The label refers to semantic, syntactic, or pragmatic phenomena in which an entity is interpreted as an agent or agent-like force due to context, interpretation, or lexical semantics rather than through explicit agentive affixes or agent nouns.

In practice, agentivelike phenomena contrast with clearly agentive forms such as agent nouns (for example, words formed with -er or -or) or explicit agentive prefixes. Instead, agency is inferred from factors such as the valency and argument structure of a verb, metaphorical extension, or discourse-pragmatic cues. This can include non-agent subjects being construed as purposeful within a given situation or nominalizations that carry an agentive force through interpretation rather than form.

Typologically, researchers examine how different languages encode agency and where agentivelike semantics arise without explicit agent morphology. In cognitive linguistics, the concept helps describe how speakers infer intentionality from action descriptions, context, and metaphor, shaping how meaning is constructed in discourse.

In computer science and artificial intelligence, the idea can inform discussions of system behaviors that resemble autonomous agents without employing full agent-based architectures. The term is informal and not widely standardized, and its precise boundaries vary by theoretical framework and scholarly emphasis.