5. Who Does What

What You’ll Learn

This lesson teaches the two most important sentence endings:

• -el, the doer ending (ergative);
• -es, the main noun or receiver ending (absolutive);
• how Early Hick marks sentence jobs with endings instead of English word order.

The Doer Ending -el

When one person or thing does an action to another person or thing, the doer gets -el.

materok means “handler” or “boatman.” The ending -el tells you the handler is the one doing the action.

The Main Noun Ending -es

The ending -es marks the main noun of a simple sentence. In a sentence with a doer and a receiver, it marks the receiver.

In English class terms, this is unusual. English usually treats “the person” in “the person walks” like a subject. Early Hick marks it with the same ending used for a receiver. The technical term is absolutive.

How to Read the Endings

Ending	Plain name	Formal name	Job in the sentence
-el	doer ending	ergative	the one doing an action to something
-es	main/receiver ending	absolutive	the simple main noun or the receiver

Try It

In the sentence below, who is the doer and who is the receiver?

Pop quizAnswer

The doer is materok-el, “the handler.” The receiver is rismater-es, “the reed boat.”

A natural English translation is:

"The handler guides the reed boat."

Reference Note

For more in-depth information, see Ergative-Absolutive Alignment.