ERGATIVITY IN IGBO AND GERMAN: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

This paper investigates ergativity in Igbo and German languages. Both languages are morphologically opposed to each other. While German is a case marking language with subject-verb agreement, Igbo language does not have surface morphological or syntactic case marking or subject verb agreement. Despite the severe dichotomy between the two languages, both manifest ergative features.  The description of the patterns of ergativity in the languages is the main focus of this paper. The work finds that in Igbo, ergativity is manifested syntactically and semantically as a conceptual category realized as an inter-clausal relation, but in the German language, ergativity is realized morphosyntactically. Similarly, in Igbo and German, ergative verbs are also restricted to verbs that can be used in a transitive and intransitive alternation with the same meaning, where the theme of the transitive verb is the same as the subject of the intransitive verb. The paper concludes that ergativity is a potential category that is necessary in the syntactic and semantic classification of verbs across languages.