Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

A-Z 375Referenceslevels of adequacyequivalent distributiondistributionequivocationA form of lexical ambiguity in words of related etymology (e.g. foot (of a human/of amountain)). Systematic equivocation arises when two meanings occur in various wordforms in the vocabulary: take, for example, the meanings ‘action’ or ‘process’ vs ‘result’in work, drawing, and expression. Equivocation is primarily a lexicological problem. (also homonymy, lexicology, polysemy)semanticsReferencesergative [Grk ergátēs ‘doer (of an action)’]1 (also agentive, narrative) Morphological case in ergative languages which indicatesthe agent of transitive verbs in the basic voice. In contrast to the nominative innominative languages (e.g. English), which generally also encodes the agent oftransitive verbs, the ergative is not the basic (=unmarked) case in languages of this type.Thus the ergative does not usually have a zero form ( zero morpheme) and is notused to mark the ‘subject,’ i.e. the primary syntactic function, which is in the absolutive;instead, it marks a syntactic function which is similar to the direct object in nominativelanguages. This means that ergative arguments in ergative languages show the syntacticbehavior of direct objects in nominative languages. For example, an argument in theergative only agrees with the predicate in an ergative language if an argument in theabsolutive also agrees with the predicate ( hierarchy universal). In addition, theergative case of an argument is changed into the absolutive in the derived, non-basicvoice category of an ergative language, i.e. the antipassive.2 In case grammar, a deep case for the agent of an action.