A Contrastive Study of Ergativity between English and Chinese from a Perspective of Material Process

Ergativity has been the hot topic in the linguistic circle in recent years. From a perspective of material process, the features of ergative verbs seem to be more obvious. And the ergativity in English and Chinese material process clauses can be contrasted from more than one aspect. In terms of forms, the Chinese ergative verbs with two morphemes have more formation ways. In semantics, both English and Chinese ergativity is characterized by causativization and anti-causativiza- tion. However, the meanings of the English ergative verbs are implied, and the meanings of their Chinese counterparts are shown externally. And syntactically, both English and Chinese ergativity cannot take agents and has the markers of tense and aspect. Some of the ergative verbs can be modified by the reflexives of their subjects. In spite of that, the Chinese ergative sen- tence patterns are wider in variety.