Talk:Labile verb

No longer redirecting to unaccusative verb

I have stopped this article from redirecting to unaccusative verb, as an ergative verb is not the same thing. I've also written an article (probably a stub) on ergative verbs. I'm still adding to it, and will comment further on this talk page later. Ann Heneghan ^(talk) 16:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that some of the information for unaccusative verb and possibly also for ergative verb (in the Wikipedia article before it was redirected) was taken from the website for the University of Utrecht Faculty of Arts.

On that website, the article for Ergative Verbs simply redirects to the entry for Unaccusative Verbs.

It might seem a bit arrogant to disagree with the University of Utrecht, but they don't actually claim that an ergative verb is an unaccusative verb. They simply give no definition of ergative verb at all, and direct the reader to the entry for unaccusative verb – just as on Wikipedia, there is currently no article for Bob Schindler; the reader is instead directed to Terri Schiavo.

My BA in Language Studies with Open University included a wonderful course in grammar. In that course, I studied ergative verbs in detail; I hadn't heard of them before that. I have looked up several comprehensive, scholarly books on grammar, and they all agree with what I learned at Open University.

I decided, therefore, that it would be appropriate to get rid of the "redirect", and to write a new article on ergative verbs. Ann Heneghan ^(talk) 17:13, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

It would be nice to have crosslinguistic examples. As presented, it looks as if they were exclusive of English. Also, if you have references, please cite them in the article (as per Wikipedia:Cite sources; see also Wikipedia:No original research). --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 10:29, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Pablo! I saw in the history of the article page that it was you who redirected it, so I meant to leave a note on your talk page saying that I had undone the redirect. Anyway, you found it before I got round to doing that – maybe this page is on your watchlist. With regard to other languages, my (uninformed) guess would be that in the form in which I described the ergative verb, it's a feature of germanic languages. I'll ask a German and a Dutch Wikipedian to have a look at the article to see if they can add any examples. In French, the same effect is produced by using a reflexive verb – he parked the car well; the car parks itself easily; we eat bread with butter; bread eats itself with butter. So it's not produced in the same way. Do such verbs exist in Spanish?

With regard to WP:CITE and WP:NOR, I knew of those two policies, but hadn't actually read either of those pages from start to finish. I'll do so now. I don't think what I wrote could qualify as original research – I certainly didn't make any new discoveries myself. I don't think the actual definition requires any reference. I didn't copy the wording from any book; it was based on what I had absorbed from having read lots of course material and essays and articles that dealt with ergative verbs. I got the categories (change of state, baking, etc.) in Celce-Murchia, M. and Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999) The Grammar Book. Boston. Heinle & Heinle. (I'm sure these categories can be found in many other books, and could also be thought up by anyone who understood what this kind of verb is.) The examples (break, burst, melt, tear, etc.) weren't copied, though there is some overlap. Anyone who knows what an ergative verb is would be able to come up with some examples. The Grammar Book gives the first category – verbs that imply a change of state – with examples, and then says that three other categories are mentioned in Collins Cobuild English Grammar, which I don't have. It proceeds to give the three categories with examples, but gives the credit to Collins. There may well ergative verbs that don't fall into any of those four categories.

Personally, I don't feel there's any real need to give references for my knowledge of what an ergative verb is, since many grammar books explain it, and I wasn't relying on any in particular. Even though I didn't know about them until I took the OU course, it's not something that can be traced to any particular brain, as far as I know, and I used my own words for the definition. The same goes for the categories, but I'm open to disagreement on that. However, when it gets to what I wrote about the significance of ergative verbs – that they allow the text to represent the affected entities as in some way causing the things that happen to them – I do agree that it needs a source. It's probably not an idea that anyone who knew what this verb was would have automatically thought of. The main source is Stubbs, M. (1996) Text and Corpus Analysis. London. Blackwell. However, Stubbs was referring to Halliday, M.A.K. in particular (1985) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London. Edward Arnold.

I'll read the two articles on Wikipedia policy, and have another think about how much reference needs to be supplied. Feel free to make suggestions. And thanks for adding the category of verbs. I didn't know that existed. Ann Heneghan ^(talk) 18:07, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Dutch examples

As Ann stated, there are Dutch examples as well. This site states a couple of examples: arriveren, barsten, gebeuren, groeien, kapseizen, ontstaan, ontwaken, rimpelen, sneuvelen, stagneren, sterven, struikelen, vallen, verdwijnen, verlopen, verschijnen, verwelken, voorkomen, zinken, zwellen. I think they could be categorised like what was done in the article, but I'm not sure the Dutch categories would be the same. If you need translations of these verbs, more examples, or examples of them in use, or even differences between English and Dutch in this regard, let me know, I'll see what I can find out! --JoanneB 19:05, 1 November 2005 (UTC)