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 of intransitive verbs like the cat ran away. English has a subject, which merges the more active argument of transitive verbs with the argument of intransitive verbs, leaving the object in transitive verbs distinct; other languages may have different strategies, or, rarely, make no distinction at all. Distinctions may be made morphologically (through case and agreement), syntactically (through word order), or both.

Terminology

Dixon (1994)

The following notations will be used to discuss the various types of alignment:

In a nominative–accusative system, S and A are grouped together, contrasting O. In an ergative–absolutive system, S and O are one group and contrast with A. The English language represents a typical nominative–accusative system (accusative for short). The name derived from the nominative and accusative cases. Basque is an ergative–absolutive system (or simply ergative). The name stemmed from the ergative and absolutive cases. S is said to align with either A (as in English) or O (as in Basque) when they take the same form.

Bickel & Nichols (2009)

Listed below are argument roles used by Bickel and Nichols for the description of alignment types. Their taxonomy is based on semantic roles and valency (the number of arguments controlled by a predicate).

  • S, the sole argument of a one-place predicate
  • A, the more agent-like arguments of a two-place (A1) or three-place (A2) predicate
  • O, the less agent-like argument of a two-place predicate
  • G, the more goal-like argument of a three-place predicate
  • T, the non-goal-like and non-agent-like argument of a three-place predicate

Locus of marking

The term locus refers to a location where the morphosyntactic marker reflecting the syntactic relations is situated. The markers may be located on the head of a phrase, a dependent, and both or none of them.

Types of alignment

  1. Nominative–accusative (or accusative) alignment treats the S argument of an intransitive verb like the A argument of transitive verbs, with the O argument distinct (<span style="color:#008000">S</span> = <span style="color:#008000">A</span>; <span style="color:#800000">O</span> separate). In a language with morphological case marking, an S and an A may both be unmarked or marked with the nominative case while the O is marked with an accusative case (or sometimes an oblique case used for dative or instrumental case roles also), as occurs with nominative -us and accusative -um in Latin: Juli<span style="color:#008000">us</span> venit "Julius came"; Juli<span style="color:#008000">us</span> Brut<span style="color:#800000">um</span> vidit "Julius saw Brutus". Languages with nominative–accusative alignment can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the A argument and promoting the O to be an S (thus taking nominative case marking); it is called the passive voice. Most of the world's languages have accusative alignment. <br>An uncommon subtype is called marked nominative. In such languages, the subject of a verb is marked for nominative case, but the object is unmarked, as are citation forms and objects of prepositions. Such alignments are clearly documented only in northeastern Africa, particularly in the Cushitic languages, and the southwestern United States and adjacent parts of Mexico, in the Yuman languages.
  2. Ergative–absolutive (or ergative) alignment treats an intransitive argument like a transitive O argument (<span style="color:#008000">S</span> = <span style="color:#008000">O</span>; <span style="color:#800000">A</span> separate). is that some constructions universally favor accusative alignment while others are more flexible. In general, behavioral constructions (control, raising, relativization) are claimed to favor nominative–accusative alignment while coding constructions (especially case constructions) do not show any alignment preferences. This idea underlies early notions of ‘deep’ vs. ‘surface’ (or ‘syntactic’ vs. ‘morphological’) ergativity (e.g. Comrie 1978; Dixon 1994): many languages have surface ergativity only (ergative alignments only in their coding constructions, like case or agreement) but not in their behavioral constructions or at least not in all of them. Languages with deep ergativity (with ergative alignment in behavioral constructions) appear to be less common.

Comparison between ergative–absolutive and nominative–accusative

The arguments can be symbolized as follows:

  • O = most patient-like argument of a transitive clause (also symbolized as P)
  • S = sole argument of an intransitive clause
  • A = most agent-like argument of a transitive clause

The S/A/O terminology avoids the use of terms like "subject" and "object", which are not stable concepts from language to language. Moreover, it avoids the terms "agent" and "patient", which are semantic roles that do not correspond consistently to particular arguments. For instance, the A might be an experiencer or a source, semantically, not just an agent.

The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following:

{| class="wikitable"

!

! Ergative–absolutive

! Nominative–accusative

|-

| O

|

|

|-

| S

|

|

|-

| A

|

|

|}

The following Basque examples demonstrate ergative–absolutive case marking system:

:{| cellpadding="6"

|+ Ergative Language

|

| &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

|

|}

In Basque, gizona is "the man" and mutila is "the boy". In a sentence like mutila gizonak ikusi du, you know who is seeing whom because -k is added to the one doing the seeing. So the sentence means "the man saw the boy". If you want to say "the boy saw the man", add the -k instead to the word meaning "the boy": mutilak gizona ikusi du.

With a verb like etorri, "come", there's no need to distinguish "who is doing the coming", so no -k is added. "The boy came" is mutila etorri da.

Japanese – by contrast – marks nouns by following them with different particles which indicate their function in the sentence:

:{| cellpadding="6"

|+ Accusative Language

|

| &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

|

|}

In this language, in the sentence "the man saw the child", the one doing the seeing ("man") may be marked with ga, which works like Basque -k (and the one who is being seen may be marked with o). However, in sentences like "the child arrived" ga can still be used even though the situation involves only a "doer" and not a "done-to". This is unlike Basque, where -k is completely forbidden in such sentences.

See also

  • Active–stative alignment
  • Agreement (linguistics)
  • Differential argument marking
  • Differential object marking
  • Labile verb
  • Milewski's typology

References

Further reading

  • Aikhenvald, A. Y., Dixon, R. M. W., & Onishi, M. (Eds). (2001). Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects. Netherlands: John Benjamins.
  • Anderson, Stephen. (1976). On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In C. Li. (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp.&nbsp;1–24). New York: Academic Press.
  • Anderson, Stephen R. (1985). Inflectional morphology. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon (Vol. 3, pp.&nbsp;150–201). Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
  • Chen, V. (2017). A reexamination of the Philippine-type voice system and its implications for Austronesian primary-level subgrouping (Doctoral dissertation). University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
  • Comrie, Bernard. (1978). Ergativity. In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.), Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language (pp.&nbsp;329–394). Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • Dixon, R. M. W. (1979). Ergativity. Language, 55 (1), 59–138. (Revised as Dixon 1994).
  • Dixon, R. M. W. (Ed.) (1987). Studies in ergativity. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
  • Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). Ergativity. Cambridge University Press.
  • Foley, William; & Van Valin, Robert. (1984). Functional syntax and universal grammar. Cambridge University Press.
  • Kroeger, Paul. (1993). Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog. Stanford: CSLI.
  • Mallinson, Graham; & Blake, Barry J. (1981). Agent and patient marking. Language typology: Cross-linguistic studies in syntax (Chap. 2, pp.&nbsp;39–120). North-Holland linguistic series. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
  • Patri, Sylvain (2007), L'alignement syntaxique dans les langues indo-européennes d'Anatolie, (StBoT 49), Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden,
  • Plank, Frans. (Ed.). (1979). Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations. London: Academic Press.
  • Schachter, Paul. (1976). The subject in Philippine languages: Actor, topic, actor–topic, or none of the above. In C. Li. (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp.&nbsp;491–518). New York: Academic Press.
  • Schachter, Paul. (1977). Reference-related and role-related properties of subjects. In P. Cole & J. Sadock (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Grammatical relations (Vol. 8, pp.&nbsp;279–306). New York: Academic Press.
  • van de Visser, M. (2006). The marked status of ergativity. Netherlands: LOT Publications.
  • Wouk, F. & Ross, M. (Eds.). (2002). The history and typology of western Austronesian voice systems. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, ANU Press.