1 (also agentive, narrative) Morphological case in ergative languages which indicates the agent of transitive verbs in the basic voice. In contrast to the nominative in nominative languages (e.g. English), which generally also encodes the agent of transitive 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 not used 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 nominative languages. This means that ergative arguments in ergative languages show the syntactic behavior of direct objects in nominative languages. For example, an argument in the ergative only agrees with the predicate in an ergative language if an argument in the absolutive also agrees with the predicate (hierarchy universal).
In addition, the ergative case of an argument is changed into the absolutive in the derived, non-basic voice category of an ergative language, i.e. the antipassive.
2 In case grammar, a deep case for the agent of an action.
References
Anderson, J.M. 1968. Ergative and nominative in English. JL 4. 1–32.
——1971. The grammar of case: towards a localistic theory. Cambridge.
