Pegative case

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In linguistics, the pegative case is a noun case that marks the agent of an action with a dative-like undergoer argument; that is, it marks the agent of a transitive verb that has only a partial or low-intensity effect on the undergoer argument.

The case has been posited by Danish linguist Søren Wichmann for the Azoyú variety of the Tlapanec language, which seems to be the only natural language to use such a case. Wichmann writes that he has

[…] based ‘Pegative’ on the Greek πηγή, which means ‘origin, source, emanation, etc.’ to provide a name for a case that proto-typically refers to a giver as opposed to a recipient".[1]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Wichmann (2005), p.16.

[edit] References