In
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between
arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of
transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument of
intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...
s like ''the cat ran away''. English has a ''
subject,'' which merges the more active argument of transitive verbs with the argument of intransitive verbs, leaving the ''
object'' distinct; other languages may have different strategies, or, rarely, make no distinction at all. Distinctions may be made
morphologically (through
case and
agreement),
syntactically (through
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
), or both.
Terminology
Arguments
Dixon (1994)
The following notations will be used to discuss the various types of alignment:
*S (from ''sole''), the
subject of an
intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...
;
*A (from ''agent''), the subject of a
transitive verb;
*O (from ''object''), the
object of a transitive verb. Some authors use the label P (from ''patient'') for O.
Note that while the labels S, A, O, and P originally stood for subject,
agent, object, and
patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other hea ...
, respectively, the concepts of S, A, and O/P are distinct both from the
grammatical relation
In linguistics, grammatical relations (also called grammatical functions, grammatical roles, or syntactic functions) are functional relationships between constituents in a clause. The standard examples of grammatical functions from traditional gra ...
s and
thematic relations. In other words, an A or S need not be an agent or subject, and an O need not be a patient.
In a nominative–accusative system, S and A are grouped together, contrasting O. In an ergative–absolutive system, S and O are one group and contrast with A. The
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
represents a typical nominative–accusative system (''accusative'' for short). The name derived from the
nominative and
accusative cases.
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
is an ergative–absolutive system (or simply ''ergative''). The name stemmed from the
ergative and
absolutive cases. S is said to align with either A (as in English) or O (as in Basque) when they take the same form.
Bickel & Nichols (2009)
Listed below are argument roles used by Bickel and Nichols for the description of alignment types. Their taxonomy is based on
semantic roles and
valency (the number of arguments controlled by a
predicate).
*S, the sole argument of a one-place predicate
*A, the more agent-like arguments of a two-place (A1) or three-place (A2) predicate
*O, the less agent-like argument of a two-place predicate
*G, the more goal-like argument of a three-place predicate
*T, the non-goal-like and non-agent-like argument of a three-place predicate
Locus of marking
The term locus refers to a location where the morphosyntactic
marker reflecting the syntactic relations is situated. The markers may be located on the
head of a phrase, a
dependent, and
both or
none of them.
Types of alignment
#
Nominative–accusative (or accusative) alignment treats the S argument of an intransitive verb like the A argument of transitive verbs, with the O argument distinct (
S =
A;
O separate) (see
nominative–accusative language).
[ Comrie, B. (2013). Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases. In M. S. Dryer & M. Haspelmath (Eds.), ''The World Atlas of Language Structures Online''. Retrieved from http://wals.info/chapter/98] In a language with morphological case marking, an S and an A may both be unmarked or marked with the
nominative case while the O is marked with an
accusative case (or sometimes an
oblique case used for
dative or
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
case roles also), as occurs with nominative ''-us'' and accusative ''-um'' in Latin: ''Juli
us venit'' "Julius came"; ''Juli
us Brut
um vidit'' "Julius saw Brutus". Languages with nominative–accusative alignment can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the A argument and promoting the O to be an S (thus taking nominative case marking); it is called the
passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...
. Most of the world's languages have accusative alignment.
An uncommon subtype is called
marked nominative
In linguistic typology, marked nominative alignment is an unusual type of morphosyntactic alignment similar to, and often considered a subtype of, a nominative–accusative alignment. In a prototypical nominative–accusative language with a g ...
. In such languages, the subject of a verb is marked for nominative case, but the object is unmarked, as are citation forms and objects of prepositions. Such alignments are clearly documented only in
northeastern Africa, particularly in the
Cushitic languages, and the southwestern United States and adjacent parts of Mexico, in the
Yuman languages
The Quechan (or Yuma) (Quechan: ''Kwatsáan'' 'those who descended') are a Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California just north of the Mexican border. Despite the ...
.
#
Ergative–absolutive (or ergative) alignment treats an intransitive argument like a transitive O argument (
S =
O;
A separate) (see
ergative–absolutive language).
An A may be marked with an
ergative case (or sometimes an
oblique case used also for the
genitive or
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
case roles) while the S argument of an intransitive verb and the O argument of a transitive verb are left unmarked or sometimes marked with an
absolutive case. Ergative–absolutive languages can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the O and promoting the A to an S, thus taking the absolutive case, called the
antipassive voice
The antipassive voice ( abbreviated or ) is a type of grammatical voice that either does not include the object or includes the object in an oblique case. This construction is similar to the passive voice, in that it decreases the verb's valency ...
. About a sixth of the world's languages have ergative alignment. The best known are probably
the Inuit languages and
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
.
#
Active–stative alignment treats the arguments of intransitive verbs like the A argument of transitives (like English) in some cases and like transitive O arguments (like Inuit) in other cases (S
a=A; S
o=O). For example, in Georgian, ''Mariamma imğera'' "Mary (-ma) sang", ''Mariam'' shares the same narrative case ending as in the transitive clause ''Mariamma c'erili dac'era'' "Mary (-ma) wrote the letter (-i)", while in ''Mariami iq'o Tbilisši revolutsiamde'' "Mary (-i) was in Tbilisi up to the revolution", ''Mariam'' shares the same case ending (-i) as the object of the transitive clause. Thus, the arguments of intransitive verbs are not uniform in its behaviour.
The reasons for treating intransitive arguments like A or like O usually have a semantic basis. The particular criteria vary from language to language and may be either fixed for each verb or chosen by the speaker according to the degree of volition, control, or suffering of the participant or to the degree of sympathy that the speaker has for the participant.
#
Austronesian alignment
Symmetrical voice, also known as Austronesian alignment, the Philippine-type voice system or the Austronesian focus system, is a typologically unusual kind of morphosyntactic alignment in which "one argument can be marked as having a special relat ...
, also called Philippine-type alignment, is found in the
Austronesian languages of the Philippines, Borneo, Taiwan, and Madagascar. These languages have both accusative-type and ergative-type alignments in transitive verbs. They are traditionally (and misleadingly) called "active" and "passive" voice because the speaker can choose to use either one rather like active and passive voice in English. However, because they are not true
voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...
, terms such as "agent trigger" or "actor focus" are increasingly used for the accusative type (S=A) and "patient trigger" or "undergoer focus" for the ergative type (S=O). (The terms with "trigger" may be preferred over those with "focus" because these are not
focus
Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film
*''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore
* ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...
systems either; morphological alignment has a long history of confused terminology). Patient-trigger alignment is the default in most of these languages. For either alignment, two core cases are used (unlike passive and antipassive voice, which have only one), but the same morphology is used for the "nominative" of the agent-trigger alignment and the "absolutive" of the patient-trigger alignment so there is a total of just three core cases: common S/A/O (usually called ''nominative,'' or less ambiguously ''
direct''), ''ergative'' A, and ''accusative'' O. Some Austronesianists argue that these languages have ''four'' alignments, with additional "voices" that mark a
locative or
benefactive
The benefactive case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the door ''for Tom''" or "This book is ''for Bob''" ...
with the direct case, but most maintain that these are not core arguments and thus not basic to the system.
#Direct alignment: very few languages make no distinction among agent, patient, and intransitive arguments, leaving the hearer to rely entirely on context and common sense to figure them out. This S/A/O case is called ''direct'', as it sometimes is in
Austronesian alignment.
#
Tripartite alignment uses a separate case or syntax for each argument,
which are conventionally called the
accusative case, the
intransitive case
In grammar, the intransitive case ( abbreviated ), also denominated passive case or patient case, is a grammatical case used in some languages to mark the argument of an intransitive verb, but not used with transitive verbs. It is generally seen i ...
, and the
ergative case. The
Nez Perce language is a notable example.
#
Transitive alignment: certain
Iranian languages, such as
Rushani, distinguish only transitivity (in the past tense), using a ''transitive case'' for both A and O, and an ''intransitive case'' for S. That is sometimes called a ''double-oblique'' system, as the transitive case is equivalent to the accusative in the non-past tense.
The direct, tripartite, and transitive alignment types are all quite rare. The alignment types other than Austronesian and Active-Stative can be shown graphically like this:
In addition, in some languages, both
nominative–accusative and ergative–absolutive systems may be used, split between different grammatical contexts, called
split ergativity. The split may sometimes be linked to
animacy, as in many
Australian Aboriginal languages, or to
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
, as in
Hindustani and
Mayan languages
The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as ...
. A few Australian languages, such as
Diyari
The Diyari (), alternatively transcribed as Dieri (), is an Indigenous Australian group of the South Australian desert originating in and around the delta of Cooper Creek to the east of Lake Eyre.
Language
Diyari is classified as one of the K ...
, are split among accusative, ergative, and tripartite alignment, depending on animacy.
A popular idea, introduced in Anderson (1976), is that some constructions universally favor accusative alignment while others are more flexible. In general, behavioral constructions (
control,
raising,
relativization) are claimed to favor nominative–accusative alignment while coding constructions (especially case constructions) do not show any alignment preferences. This idea underlies early notions of ‘deep’ vs. ‘surface’ (or ‘syntactic’ vs. ‘morphological’) ergativity (e.g. Comrie 1978;
[ Comrie, Bernard. (1978). Ergativity. In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.), Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language (pp. 329–394). Austin: University of Texas Press.] Dixon 1994
[ Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). Ergativity. Cambridge University Press.]): many languages have surface ergativity only (ergative alignments only in their coding constructions, like case or agreement) but not in their behavioral constructions or at least not in all of them. Languages with
deep ergativity (with ergative alignment in behavioral constructions) appear to be less common.
Comparison between ergative-absolutive and nominative-accusative
The arguments can be symbolized as follows:
* O = most patient-like argument of a transitive clause (also symbolized as P)
* S = sole argument of an intransitive clause
* A = most agent-like argument of a transitive clause
The S/A/O terminology avoids the use of terms like "subject" and "object", which are not stable concepts from language to language. Moreover, it avoids the terms "agent" and "patient", which are semantic roles that do not correspond consistently to particular arguments. For instance, the A might be an
experiencer or a source, semantically, not just an
agent.
The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following:
The following
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
examples demonstrate ergative–absolutive case marking system:
[Campbell, G. L. & King, G. (2011). ''The Routledge Concise Compendium of the World's Languages'' (2nd ed, p. 62). New York, NY: Routledge.]
:
In Basque, ''gizona'' is "the man" and ''mutila'' is "the boy". In a sentence like ''mutila gizonak ikusi du'', you know who is seeing whom because ''-k'' is added to the one doing the seeing. So the sentence means "the man saw the boy". If you want to say "the boy saw the man", add the ''-k'' instead to the word meaning "the boy": ''mutilak gizona ikusi du''.
With a verb like ''etorri'', "come", there's no need to distinguish "who is doing the coming", so no ''-k'' is added. "The boy came" is ''mutila etorri da''.
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
– by contrast – marks nouns by following them with different particles which indicate their function in the sentence:
:
In this language, in the sentence "the man saw the child", the one doing the seeing ("man") may be marked with ''ga'', which works like Basque ''-k'' (and the one who is being seen may be marked with ''o''). However, in sentences like "the child arrived" ''ga'' can still be used even though the situation involves only a "doer" and not a "done-to". This is unlike Basque, where ''-k'' is completely forbidden in such sentences.
See also
*
Agreement (linguistics) In linguistics, agreement or concord ( abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category (such as gende ...
*
Differential argument marking
*
Differential object marking
*
Milewski's typology Milewski's typology is a language classification system proposed in the 1960s by the Polish linguist Tadeusz Milewski. In this classification active and tripartite languages were omitted because they were little known in the study of linguistics at ...
References
Further reading
*
Aikhenvald, A. Y.,
Dixon, R. M. W., & Onishi, M. (Eds). (2001). ''Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects''. Netherlands: John Benjamins.
* Anderson, Stephen. (1976). On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In C. Li. (Ed.), ''Subject and topic'' (pp. 1–24). New York: Academic Press.
* Anderson, Stephen R. (1985). Inflectional morphology. In T. Shopen (Ed.), ''Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon'' (Vol. 3, pp. 150–201). Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
*Chen, V. (2017)
''A reexamination of the Philippine-type voice system and its implications for Austronesian primary-level subgrouping'' (Doctoral dissertation) University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
* Comrie, Bernard. (1978). Ergativity. In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.), ''Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language'' (pp. 329–394). Austin: University of Texas Press.
* Dixon, R. M. W. (1979). Ergativity. ''Language'', ''55'' (1), 59–138. (Revised as Dixon 1994).
* Dixon, R. M. W. (Ed.) (1987). ''Studies in ergativity''. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
* Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). ''Ergativity''. Cambridge University Press.
* Foley, William; &
Van Valin, Robert. (1984). ''Functional syntax and universal grammar''. Cambridge University Press.
* Kroeger, Paul. (1993). ''Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog''. Stanford: CSLI.
* Mallinson, Graham; & Blake, Barry J. (1981). Agent and patient marking. ''Language typology: Cross-linguistic studies in syntax'' (Chap. 2, pp. 39–120). North-Holland linguistic series. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
*Patri, Sylvain (2007), ''L'alignement syntaxique dans les langues indo-européennes d'Anatolie'', ''(
StBoT 49)'', Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden,
* Plank, Frans. (Ed.). (1979). ''Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations''. London: Academic Press.
* Schachter, Paul. (1976). The subject in Philippine languages: Actor, topic, actor–topic, or none of the above. In C. Li. (Ed.), ''Subject and topic'' (pp. 491–518). New York: Academic Press.
* Schachter, Paul. (1977). Reference-related and role-related properties of subjects. In P. Cole & J. Sadock (Eds.), ''Syntax and semantics: Grammatical relations'' (Vol. 8, pp. 279–306). New York: Academic Press.
*van de Visser, M. (2006). ''The marked status of ergativity''. Netherlands: LOT Publications.
*Wouk, F. & Ross, M. (Eds.). (2002). ''The history and typology of western Austronesian voice systems''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, ANU Press.
{{Grammatical cases
Grammar