Linguistic typology
Morphological typology
Analytic language
Synthetic language
Fusional language
Agglutinative language
Polysynthetic language
Morphosyntactic alignment
Theta role
Syntactic pivot
Nominative-accusative language
Nominative-absolutive language
Ergative-absolutive language
Tripartite language
Time Manner Place
Place Manner Time
Subject Verb Object
Subject Object Verb
Verb Subject Object
Verb Object Subject
Object Subject Verb
Object Verb Subject
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In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish arguments of transitive verbs and intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs usually have two arguments, the agent and the patient (often imprecisely termed subject and object in English). Intransitive verbs have a single argument, the experiencer (also considered a subject).

In this regard, most languages can be classified as either nominative-accusative, nominative-absolutive, or ergative-absolutive. However, some languages make no distinction between the agent, experiencer, and patient, while some Australian languages use a separate case for each (tripartite): the nominative case, intransitive case, and absolutive case. Certain Iranian languages, such as Rushani, only distinguish transitivity, using a transitive case and an intransitive case.

Nominative-accusative languages group the experiencer and agent, with the patient separate. In a language with morphological case marking, the experiencer and agent are both marked with the nominative case, while the patient is marked with the accusative case. Languages without case marking identify the arguments using a fixed word order (for example, in Subject Verb Object languages the nominative case precedes the verb while the accusative case follows).

Ergative-absolutive languages mark the agent with the ergative case and mark the experiencer and patient with the absolutive case.

Nominative-absolutive languages distinguish between a voluntary (nominative case) or involuntary experiencer (absolutive case). In these languages, the agent is in the nominative and the patient is in the absolutive.

es:Alineamiento morfosintáctico

External Link

Ergativity (http://dedalvs.free.fr/notes.html#ergativity)