Nominative-absolutive language - Definition and Overview

A nominative-absolutive language is one that marks the subject of a transitive verb or a voluntary subject of an intransitive verb distinctly from the object of a transitive verb or an involuntary subject of an intransitive verb. If the language has morphological case, then the verb arguments are marked thus:

• For an intransitive verb, a subject who intentionally performs the action is marked with the nominative case, while a subject experiencing an action they have no control over is marked with the absolutive case.
• For a transitive verb, the subject is marked with the nominative case, and the object is marked with the absolutive case.

Languages lacking case inflections may indicate case with different word orders. For example, an absolutive argument might precede the verb, while the nominative argument might follow.

Other widely used terms for these kinds of systems are active language and agentive language. The grammatical relations can be called agentive case (corresponding to nominative above) and patientive case (absolutive).