agentív

Agentív is a term used in linguistics to describe the grammatical role of the agent, the entity that intentionally performs an action. In many languages, the agent is marked by a specific case, often called the ergative case. This is in contrast to accusative languages, where the subject of a transitive verb (which can be the agent or a patient) is marked by the nominative case. Agentív languages typically mark the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb with the same case, often called the absolutive case.

The concept of agentív alignment is distinct from other case-marking systems. For instance, in nominative-accusative languages, the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs is marked by the nominative case, while the object of a transitive verb is marked by the accusative case. In contrast, a purely agentív system would mark the agent of a transitive verb with the ergative case and both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb with the absolutive case.

Not all languages exhibit a pure agentív alignment. Some languages display split-ergativity, where the case marking depends on factors such as the tense, aspect, or person of the verb, or the animacy of the noun. For example, a language might use ergative marking for transitive verbs in the past tense but nominative-accusative marking in the present tense. The study of agentív alignment is important for understanding the diverse ways languages encode grammatical relationships and how semantic roles are mapped onto syntactic structures.