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Morphosyntactic Alignment
In linguistics, Morphosyntactic Alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs, and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word order), or through both.
Semantics and grammatical relations
The difference between transitive and intransitive verbs lies in the amount of core arguments they have. A Transitive verb takes both an Agent A and Object O, while an Intransitive one only takes a Subject S.
The alignment can take several different forms:
- Nominative–accusative languages treat the Agent and Subject the same while separating the Object. (A=S, O) The cases of Subject and Agent are Nominative, while the Object is Accusative, as occurs with the Nominative -us and the Accusative -um in Latin: Julius venit "Julius came"; Julius Brutum vidit "Julius saw Brutus". English is also a nominative-accusative language, as in I saw him, He saw me.
- Ergative–absolutive languages treat the Subject and Object as the same, while separating the Agent. (S=O, A) The agent is marked with Ergative case while subject and object take Absolutive. Ergative–absolutive languages can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the Object and promoting the Agent to a Subject, thus taking the Absolutive case; this is called the Antipassive voice.
- Transitive languages treat the Agent and Object the same while separating the Subject. (A=O, S) the Subject takes the Intransitive case, while the agent and object take the Transitive case.
- Direct languages treat the Agent, Object and Subject all the same, (S=O=A) and hence mark none of them.
- Tripartite languages treat Subject, Object, and Agent separately. (S, O, A)
- Fluid languages treats some verbs as Nominative–accusative, while treating others as Ergative–absolutive.
