| Morphosyntactic Alignment |
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In Linguistics , morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the Argument s of Transitive Verb s and Intransitive Verb s. The distinction can be made Morphologically , with Morpheme s that mark Grammatical Case ; Syntactically , through word order; or both. Semantics and grammatical relations Transitive verbs have two core arguments, which in a language like English are Subject and Object . Intransitive verbs have a single core argument, which in English is the subject. Of these three types of core argument, most languages treat two the same and the third distinctly. Theta Role s may be used to conceptualize this ''alignment'' of the arguments. The most relevant roles are the Agent , which carries out an action, the Patient , which undergoes an action. # Nominative-accusative Language s treat the argument of an intransitive verb like an agent, with the patient distinct. That is, the subject of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb are treated alike (assuming the language has subjects), while the object of a transitive verb is treated differently. In a language with morphological case marking, an argument of an intransitive verb and an agent are both unmarked or marked with the Nominative Case , while the patient is marked with an Accusative Case . (There may be more than one case for a single category; for example, Baltic-Finnic Languages use both the Accusative Case and the Partitive Case to mark the object. Some languages such as Yuman mark the nominative rather than the accusative, but this functions as more than just case marking.) Languages without case marking identify the arguments through word order (for example, in Subject Verb Object languages the nominative argument precedes the verb while the accusative argument follows). Many nominative-accusative languages can turn transitive verbs into intransitives by marking the patient with the nominative case and dropping the agent; this is called the Passive Voice . # Ergative-absolutive Language s treat an intransitive argument like a patient. An agent is marked with an Ergative Case (sometimes formally the same as the Genitive or Locative Case ), while an argument of an intransitive verb and a patient are left unmarked or sometimes marked with an Absolutive Case . Many linguists do not feel that these languages have anything equivalent to a subject. Ergative-absolutive languages can turn transitive verbs into intransitives by marking the agent with the ergative case and dropping the patient; this is called the Antipassive Voice . # The or Benefactive with the nominative case, but others believe that these are not basic to the system. # Active-stative Language s treat an intransitive argument as either an agent or as a patient based on its Semantics . The particular criteria vary from language to language, and may either be fixed lexically for each verb, or chosen by the speaker according to the degree of volition, control, or suffering of the verbal action by the participant, or the degree of sympathy the speaker has. (Note that agents and patients of transitive verbs are always treated as such.) A very few languages make no distinction whatsoever between agent, patient, and intransitive arguments, leaving the hearer to rely entirely on context and common sense to figure them out. Some others, called Tripartite Language s, use a separate case or syntax for each argument, which are conventionally called the Accusative Case , the Intransitive Case , and the Ergative Case . Certain Iranian Language s, such as Rushani , distinguish only transitivity, using a Transitive Case , for both agent and patient, and an intransitive case. Furthermore, a single language may use nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive systems in different grammatical contexts, usually linked to Animacy ( Australian Aboriginal Languages ) or Aspect ( Mayan Languages ). This is called Split Ergativity , and indeed there is probably some degree of split in most ergative languages. Ergative vs. accusative Ergative languages contrast to ''nominative-accusative'' languages (such as English), which treat the objects of transitive verbs distinctly from other core arguments. These different arguments can be symbolized as follows:
The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following: The following Basque examples demonstrate ergative-absolutive case marking system: In Basque, ''gizona'' is "the man" and ''mutil'' is "boy". ''Gizona'' has a different case marking depending on whether it is the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb. The first form is in the absolutive case, marked here by a Null Morpheme (''-∅'') and the second form is in the ergative case, marked by a ''-k'' suffix. The subject of the intransitive sentence and the object of the transitive sentence both have the same absolutive case, while ergative case appears only on the transitive subject. To contrast with a nominative-accusative language, Japanese marks nouns with a different case marking: In this language, the subject ''otoko'' of intransitive and transitive sentences is marked with the same Nominative Case ''ga''. However, the object of transitive sentence ''kodomo'' is marked with the Accusative Case ''wo''. (Note that these particles are optional and not true case markers.) Milewski's typology Less widely known yet worth mention is a similar classification proposed in the 1960's by the Polish linguist Tadeusz Milewski. In this classification active and tripartite languages were omitted because they were little known at that time. Milewski proposed a division of languages into 6 groups, based upon consideration of 4 main syntactic relationships; these were: (1) the relationship of the experiencer to the verb, (2) the relationship of the agent to the verb, (3) the relationship of the patient to the verb, and (4) the relationship of the nominal attribute or '' Predicate '' to the noun. These criteria are interesting from a typological point of view because in many languages there is no difference between the sentence and the nominal phrase. Milewski's typology can be employed when analyzing languages with case marking but can also be used with those which use a fixed word order or a specific form of Incorporation . For simplicity, the table below classifies casual languages in which the nominal attribute is marked with the Genitive Case . The letters a, b, and c represent formal inflective markers specific to each language. For instance, "a" always represents the formal marker by which the experiencer is signified, called either the "nominative" or the "absolutive" depending upon whether this morpheme marks the agent of the action (as in nominative-accusative languages) or the patient (as in ergative-absolutive languages). As the table shows: # In languages of the 1st class, the experiencer and the agent are marked with the nominative case (the "a" marker) while the patient is marked with the '''accusative''' case (the "b" marker). This class is the most widely spread. Most nominative-accusative languages belong here. # Languages of the 2nd class inflect differently. The experiencer is marked with the same morpheme as the patient while the agent is marked with a distinct morpheme. In contrast to Class 1 languages, the "a" marker represents the absolutive while the "b" marker denotes the '''ergative''' (in Class 1 languages, the "a" marker denotes the '''nominative''' and the "b" marker the '''accusative'''). Most ergative-absolutive languages belong here. # Languages of the 3rd class could belong to nominative-accusative languages, i.e. the nominative marks both the agent and the experiencer (the "a" marker). Class 3 languages do not, however, contain distinct markers/cases for the patient and nominal attributes, which together share the same marker, which denotes genitive (the "b" marker). Examples of languages of the 3rd class are Indonesian and Hopi . It is interesting that marking the patient with the genitive is quite frequent in Slavic languages even if the accusative is usually applied in them just like in other European languages. # Languages of the 4th class could be considered ergative-absolutive languages insofar as they make no distinction between the experiencer and the patient, marking both with the absolutive (the "a" marker). Yet languages of this class are contrary to typical ergative-absolutive languages insofar as they mark both agent and nominal attribute as '''genitive''' ( Ergative-genitive , the "b" marker). Examples of Class 4 languages are the Inuktitut , Salishan Languages , and Mayan Languages . # Languages of the 5th class use the genitive not only for the nominal attribute but also for the agent and the experiencer (the "a" marker). The other case, called the '''accusative''', marks only the patient (the "b" marker). The only language of this class mentioned by Milewski is Nass (Niska, Nisga'a) of the Tsimshianic family. # Languages of the 6th class use the genitive not only for the nominal attribute but also for the experiencer and the patient (the "a" marker"). The other case, the '''ergative''', is used for the agent (the "b" marker). This group is not too numerous: Tsimshian, Tunica and Guarani belong here. External links
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