In linguistic typology, transitive alignment is a type of

morphosyntactic alignment In linguistics, 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 ...

used in a small number of languages in which a single

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

is used to mark both

arguments An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...

of a

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transiti ...

, but not with the single argument 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 ...

. Such a situation, which is quite rare among the world's languages, has also been called a ''double-

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry *Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...

'' clause structure. Rushani, an Iranian dialect, has this alignment in the past tense. That is, in the past tense (or perhaps perfective aspect), the agent and object of a transitive verb are marked with the same case ending, while the subject of an intransitive verb is not marked. In the present tense, the object of the transitive verb is marked, the other two roles are not – that is, a typical nominative–accusative alignment.J.R. Payne, 'Language Universals and Language Types', in Collinge, ed. 1990. ''An Encyclopedia of Language''. Routledge. From Payne, 1980. Intransitive: no case marking : :'I went to Xorog' Transitive, past tense: double case marking : :'I saw you' :(double oblique: literally 'me saw thee') Transitive, present tense: accusative case marking : :'I see you' :(nominative–accusative) According to Payne, it's clear what happened here: Rushani once had a

split-ergative In linguistic typology, split ergativity is a feature of certain languages where some constructions use ergative syntax and morphology, but other constructions show another pattern, usually nominative–accusative. The conditions in which ergati ...

alignment, as is common in the area, where the object was marked (oblique) in the present tense, but the agent was marked in the past. The case forms of the object were then leveled, and with the marking applied to the past tense as well. However, this resulted in a complication, the typologically unusual situation where the agent and object are treated the same, and different from the intransitive subject. Given its rarity, one might expect such a system to be unstable, and indeed it appears to be changing. Payne reports that younger speakers change the past-tense construction to one of the following, either using the absolutive (= nominative) inflection for the agent: : :'I saw you' :(nominative–accusative) or secondarily marking the object as an object, using the preposition ''az'' (literally 'from'): : :'I saw you' :(effectively, accusative and double-accusative)

References

Grammatical cases {{Ling-morph-stub

See also

References