I want to know how works the ergative structure and if it's often used or not and please could you give some examples like 院子 里 停着 车。 Literal: Courtyard-in park vehicle. Translation: In the courtyard is parked a vehicle. It's said a sentence where you can start it with the location and so go on, sorry cannot help more, but i didn't find more information but some articles.
Ergative constructions (作格结构) is one name for a phenomenon where the one subject argument in the intransitive version of the construction is the same as the direct object of the transitive version. These ergative verbs are variously called labile verbs, unaccusative verbs (非宾格动词), anticausative verbs; they have even been posited as reflecting a sort of middle voice (distinct from the more usual active and passive voices for verbs).
For example in Chinese:
This parallels what happens in ergative-absolutive languages, where the morphosyntactic alignment is like this by default.
This kind of pattern is only defined for those verbs that can both be transitive in some instances and intransitive in others, also known as ambitransitive verbs.
TRANSITIVE ACTIVE: We defeated them. 我们打败了他们。
INTRANSITIVE (Chinese only) = NOTIONAL PASSIVE: 他们打败了。
TRANSITIVE PASSIVE: They were/got defeated. 他们被/给打败了。
However, the sentence used in the original question is not even from one of these ambitransitive verbs, as I can't think of a case where 停 alone acts as a transitive verb. Rather the two forms are:
SUBJECT - LOCATION - VERB: 车在院子里停着。
LOCATION - VERB - SUBJECT: [在]院子里停着车。
This is called locative inversion by linguists. In Chinese, it is very often used, although not as frequently as the standard order. Note that it is possible to drop the 在 in the form with location at the front. It can give off an atmospheric, almost poetic vibe, and is a beloved technique of narration and storytelling. This is not too dissimilar to English.
The nearest you'll get to ergative is the Chinese use of 把：you could argue 把 marks ergative case, but just as easily, you could say, 把 marks accusative case and ergative is accusative under another name!
Mostly, 把 gets used like this: 我把门开了。
So is '把门‘ accusative, or ergative, or both, or neither?
Since there really are no case markings, and no case in Chinese, for example:
there is also no ergative case.
Look at 被 for passive. Sometimes, you could argue 被 marks ergative case:
- 太阳晒伤了我。(but 2. is not very "Chinese", everyone knows the sun burnt you!)
Chinese is more intelligent than our 'case-based' languages!