💘 Morphosyntactic alignment 💘
Morphosyntactic alignment looks at the relationship between the Sole Argument (S) of intransitive verbs, the Agent (A) of transitive verbs, and the Patient (P) of transitive verbs.
Perhaps it’s easiest to see with an example:
To sleep is an intransitive verb, and in this example the dog is its sole argument.
To scare is a transitive verb. Here, the dog is the agent (the one performing the action) and the cat is the patient (the one upon which an action is performed)
Nominative-accusative alignment:
This is the most common type of alignment, and it’s the one you’re probably most familiar with, since it’s used in English as well. In these languages, S is treated the same as A (i.e. they align), and P is treated differently. This is most visible in languages with morphological case markings - those that modify the noun depending on the role it plays in a sentence. English only preserves distinct case markings in pronouns, so I’ll use those in the examples:
The word I looks the same when it is the agent of the transitive verb to love as it does when its the sole argument of the verb to sleep. The same word changes its form when it becomes the patient.
Most Indo-European languages are Nominative-Accusative. Some languages, like English, only have morphological case markings for pronouns, but distinguish between the agent and the patient through word order.
Ergative-absolutive alignment:
In this kind of alignment, it is P that is treated the same way as S, whereas A is different. Hypothetically, if English was ergative-absolutive, we would say:
The word I looks the same when it is the patient of the transitive verb to love as it does when it’s the sole argument of the verb to sleep. The same word changes its form when it becomes the agent.
Basque is probably the most well-known example of an ergative-absolutive language.
In this type of language, S, A an P all get treated differently. Examples from Wangkumara:
Meaning: I died. I is the sole argument.
Meaning: I hit him. I is the agent. It looks differently than it does as the sole argument.
Meaning: She hit me. Me is the patient. It looks different than it does as either the sole argument or the agent.
Nez Perce is another language with tripartite alignment.
Some languages will use both Nominative-Accusative and Ergative-Absolutive alignment, depending on the circumstances. For example, Diyrbal is Ergative-Absolutive unless one of the arguments is a discourse participant (i. e. is in the 1st or 2nd person). So, if English were to follow the same system as Diyrbal does, we’d have to say:
She is the sole argument.
One of the arguments is in the 1st person, so she follows the same rules as it would in Nominative-Accusative languages.
Both of the arguments are in the 3rd person, and so they follow the same rules they would in ergative-absolutive languages.
Another example of split ergativity is Nhanda, in which most common nouns follow the ergative-absolutive system, whereas pronouns use the nominative-absolutive one.
This is a rare type of alignment, in which A and P are treated the same, while S is treated differently. If English were to use transitive alignment, we would say:
The Rushani language exhibits transitive alignment, though only in the past tense.
Some languages differentiate the arguments based on whether they are perceived as “active” or “stative”. The agent is always active, since it’s performing the action, and the patient is stative. The sole argument of an intransitive verb can be either active or stative, depending on what the verb is, or on the degree of volition the argument has. If English was an active-stative language we might say:
Running is something I’m actively doing. I gets treated like an agent in this case.
I am passive, it’s almost like the standing is happening to me. I gets treated like a patient.
This kind of alignment in found throughout the Americas.
Austronesian alignment is pretty complex and difficult to explain, but in its most basic application it allows the user to select the argument (either A or P) which they want to highlight, or one that has a special relationship to the verb. This argument is then treated as the sole argument would be, and the other one is treated differently.
It is found in the Austronesian languages of the Philippines, Borneo, Taiwan and Madagascar.
Here, none of the arguments are marked in any way - neither morphologically nor syntactically - and the listener has to figure out which one is meant to be the agent and which one is the patient.
Although so far all the examples I’ve shared rely on morphology, syntax can also be used to show alignment. For example, English is Nominative-Accusative because the agent, just like the sole argument, precedes the verb, whereas the patient follows it. A and S are treated in the same way, P is different. In a language with direct alignment nouns only have one form and word order is fluent. This kind of alignment is very rare.
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