Ergative–absolutive alignment

In linguistic typology, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the subject of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb. In ergative–absolutive languages with grammatical case, the ergative case refers to the marking of agents of transitive verbs, distinguishing it from the concept of a "subject" of a transitive or intransitive verb in English. The case for the single argument of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb is called the absolutive.

The ergative–absolutive alignment is in contrast to nominative–accusative alignment, which is observed in English, where the single argument of an intransitive verb behaves grammatically like the agent of a transitive verb but different from the object of a transitive verb.

By one measure, 17% of the world's languages use an ergative alignment in the marking of noun phrases. Examples of ergative–absolutive languages include Basque, Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, Sumerian, and certain Indo-European languages such as Pashto, the Kurdish languages and many others.