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Glite Dictionary
agentive

agentive

7.7
About a person or thing that does an action, especially in grammar
  • adjective
  • /ˈeɪdʒənˌtɪv/
  • Specialized
translation icon : agencial
  • In grammar, an agentive pronoun identifies the doer of the action in a sentence, such as 'he' in 'He kicked the ball.'
  • agentive power
  • agentive subject
  • agentive self

Examples

  • The institutionalized forms of agentive action for farmworkers are limited, complicated, and underused.

    Academic text (2017)

  • Therefore, putting up with these conditions was an agentive act with defined, albeit fluid, limits.

    Academic text (2017)

  • Subjects emerge from their engagement with, and status as, objects through a kind of consciousness that uses memory as its basis for agentive action.

    Academic text (2018)

  • The first involves honoring the body as integral to and indivisible from the agentive self.

    Academic text (2013)

  • In this conceptual framework, we aim to analyze agency by considering both the effects and intentions of farmworkers' and their families' agentive acts.

    Academic text (2017)

  • My focus is not only upon the interrelatedness of texts, but also upon the agentive processes by which these interrelations formed and were engaged by medieval Iberian speech communities.

    Academic text (2004)

  • Self-discovery of edits and revisions promotes agentive writers through self-evaluation and diagnosis of writing proficiency.

    Academic text (2013)

  • Beggars, by their very presence in Shenyang, are agentive insofar as they call into question the fantasies of modernity and development widely promulgated and expressed throughout China.

    Academic text (2009)

  • The agentive role of the subject in a sentence is crucial for understanding who performs the action.

  • Using an agentive verb can clarify who is responsible for the action, like in 'The teacher explained the concept.'

Synonyms

agentic
vsagentive
  • Specialized
1 8.8

Relating to the person or thing that does the action in a sentence

is about the person or thing performing an action more generally
agential
vsagentive
  • Specialized
9.1

Relating to a person or thing that causes change

is more focused on who performs actions especially in grammar

Compounds

agentive role
  • Specialized
9.3

The person or animal that makes the action happen in a sentence

Surface Forms

agentive positive

Morphology

agentive = agent (transparent) = agent + ive

A straightforward adjective formation from the noun 'agent' using the productive suffix '-ive', so the meaning 'relating to an agent' is directly derived.

Etymology

Agentive comes from agent, which is built on the root ag- meaning 'to do' or 'act'. So an agentive form shows the person or thing that 'does' the action, like the ending -er in 'teacher' which means 'one who does'.