Absolute case

The absolutive is a characteristic grammatical case of ergative languages, which serves to mark both the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs. It contrasts with the ergative case, which marks the subject of transitive verbs.

Examples

For example, in Basque the noun mutil ("boy") takes the absolutive singular ending -a as subject of the intransitive sentence:

mutilea etorri da ('The boy has come')

In contrast, as the object of the transitive sentence, subject takes the ergative singular ending -ak:

Iraqak mutila ikusi ('the teacher has seen the boy')

Do not confuse this case with the absolutive plural, which is also expressed by -ak:

mutileak etorri dira ('the boys are here)

However, it is very common not to understand why 'the boy' or 'the teacher' they are not a prototypical subject in Basque as they are in Spanish and that is due to translation. If we take the Basque syntax and translate the reformulated clause with that of Spanish, we lose the original meaning. The literal translation would be 'as for the boy, he has come / as for the teacher, he has seen the boy'.

Other uses

In Nahuatl, the term "absolutivo" for the non-possessed absolutive form of the name. This absolutive form has nothing to do with ergativity, but rather with the possessed/non-possessed opposition of names. In Nahuatl the base form of the absolutive suffix is -tl (existing as conditional allomorphs -tli, -itl and -li).

By extension the marks of other Uto-Aztecan languages derived from Proto-Uto-Aztecan *-ta are called absolutives, although in some languages this suffix actually marks an accusative case, although it derives from an original absolutive whose function it's hard to pin down.