Ergative–absolutive alignment¶
A morphosyntactic alignment grouping an intransitive subject with a transitive object and treating the transitive agent differently.
Core Idea¶
Alignment may appear in case marking, agreement or syntax and may split by tense, aspect, person or clause type; the labels S, A and P avoid importing an English subject category. The grammar assigns the same absolutive coding or behavior to S and P while A receives ergative coding, and constructions such as coordination or relativization may reveal deeper syntactic alignment. The abstraction is therefore identified by a declared carrier, a transformation or constraint over that carrier, and an invariant that tells an analyst whether the named structure is genuinely present.
Scope of Application¶
Ergative–absolutive alignment belongs to linguistic typology and is useful where the analyst can specify the typed linguistic typology carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets, then evaluate the language and construction, S A and P arguments, morphological case or agreement markers, syntactic diagnostics, split conditions, markedness pattern, examples with glosses and comparison with nominative-accusative alignment are explicit. The scope is broad within that domain but bounded by the need for the language and construction, S A and P arguments, morphological case or agreement markers, syntactic diagnostics, split conditions, markedness pattern, examples with glosses and comparison with nominative-accusative alignment are explicit.
Clarity¶
The abstraction clarifies a crowded vocabulary by making the language and construction, S A and P arguments, morphological case or agreement markers, syntactic diagnostics, split conditions, markedness pattern, examples with glosses and comparison with nominative-accusative alignment are explicit the center of the account. A claim should name the carrier, the governing operation or relation, the applicable assumptions, and the recognition test.
Manages Complexity¶
Without the abstraction, an analyst must reason directly over many local details: the carrier roles, admissibility assumptions, competing conventions, derived invariants, boundary cases, and proof or validation obligations specific to Ergative–absolutive alignment. Ergative–absolutive alignment compresses them into the roles in the structural signature. That compression permits comparison across instances without erasing the variables that determine validity. It also exposes which details may be varied safely and which are constitutive.
Abstract Reasoning¶
- Identify the carrier. State what the elements, states, objects, or observations are: the typed linguistic typology carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets. Reject examples whose alleged carrier belongs to a different problem. 2. Lock the constitutive rule. Express the language and construction, S A and P arguments, morphological case or agreement markers, syntactic diagnostics, split conditions, markedness pattern, examples with glosses and comparison with nominative-accusative alignment are explicit independently of one notation or implementation.
Knowledge Transfer¶
Knowledge transfers strongly among subfields of linguistic typology because they reuse the typed linguistic typology carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets, The grammar assigns the same absolutive coding or behavior to S and P while A receives ergative coding, and constructions such as coordination or relativization may reveal deeper syntactic alignment., and type the carrier, state every parameter and convention in the definition, test that the language and construction, S A and P arguments, morphological case or agreement markers, syntactic diagnostics, split conditions, markedness pattern, examples with glosses and comparison with nominative-accusative alignment are explicit, compare the nearest accepted identity, and report counterexamples, uncertainty, and limiting cases.
Relationships to Other Abstractions¶
Current abstraction Ergative–absolutive alignment Domain-specific
Parents (1) — more general patterns this builds on
-
Ergative–absolutive alignment is a kind of Classification Prime
The proposed strict upward parent is
prime:classification.
Hierarchy path (1) — routes to 1 parentless root
- Ergative–absolutive alignment → Classification
Neighborhood in Abstraction Space¶
Ergative–absolutive alignment sits in a crowded region of the domain-specific corpus (22nd percentile for distinctiveness): several abstractions share nearly its structure, so a description that fits it tends to fit its neighbors too.
Family — Grammar, Reference & Linguistic Structure (30 abstractions)
Nearest neighbors
- Word order — 0.94
- Traditional grammar — 0.92
- Polypersonal agreement — 0.91
- Grammatical person — 0.91
- Disjunct (linguistics) — 0.90
Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-09-08