Differences of Ergative between Linguistic Typology and Formal Linguistics

Ergative is a key notion in linguistics whose usage varies among scholars and schools. This paper discusses the connotations of ergative, ergative language, ergativity, ergative verb, unaccusative verb, etc. And then further compares their different understandings and major concerns in linguistic typology and formal linguistics. It shows that the terms used in the two schools are not much corelated. The only point in common is that they both use the rule of S=P≠A to define ergativity, but are different in scope. Chinese linguists do not agree on the use of terms either. Discussions are often not carried out in the same theoretical framework.