Morphosyntactic Alignment¶
Compare how a grammatical subsystem treats intransitive S versus transitive A and P arguments.
Core Idea¶
Morphosyntactic alignment compares how a grammatical system treats S (the sole argument of an intransitive predicate) with A and P (the more agent-like and patient-like arguments of a transitive predicate). Within a specified coding channel, S=A≠P is nominative–accusative, and S=P≠A is ergative–absolutive; other groupings include neutral, tripartite, and active patterns.[ref-c9eec9f25057][ref-b98b125dc498]
Scope of Application¶
The comparison applies to case marking, pronouns, verbal person marking, or a stated syntactic behavior, but these channels must be kept distinct. WALS reports that some English pronouns show S=A≠P (we versus us) while full English noun phrases have neutral case; Konjo verbal person marking shows S=P≠A in its cited third-person forms.[ref-c9eec9f25057][ref-b98b125dc498]
Clarity¶
An alignment claim identifies the three comparison positions, the observable channel, and the construction in which likeness or difference holds. It does not mean an entire language has one type across all persons, aspects, clause types, and grammatical subsystems. Nor does the label A guarantee intentional agency in every clause.[ref-c9eec9f25057][ref-b98b125dc498]
Manages Complexity¶
The S/A/P frame compresses many case or agreement observations into comparable grouping patterns. The compression is useful only if the underlying forms and split conditions remain available for inspection.
Abstract Reasoning¶
Collect comparable intransitive and transitive clauses, choose one channel, and test which of S, A, and P share coding. When the grouping changes with pronoun versus full noun phrase or with aspect and person, state separate scoped results rather than forcing one language-wide label.[ref-c9eec9f25057][ref-b98b125dc498]
Knowledge Transfer¶
The diagnostic transfers literally among grammatical coding systems when each channel is specified. Its general idea of grouping positions is broader, but outside morphosyntax there are no S/A/P argument roles to instantiate this named abstraction.
[^ref-c9eec9f25057]: Bernard Comrie, “Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases”, WALS Online, §§1 and 3. [^ref-b98b125dc498]: Anna Siewierska, “Alignment of Verbal Person Marking”, WALS Online, §1.
Relationships to Other Abstractions¶
Current abstraction Morphosyntactic Alignment Domain-specific
Parents (1) — more general patterns this builds on
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Morphosyntactic Alignment presupposes Classification Prime
The analytic alignment diagnosis requires criterion-bound grouping of S, A and P grammatical positions.
Hierarchy path (1) — routes to 1 parentless root
- Morphosyntactic Alignment → Classification
Neighborhood in Abstraction Space¶
Morphosyntactic Alignment sits in a sparse region of the domain-specific corpus (66th percentile for distinctiveness): few abstractions share its structure, so a faithful description tends to retrieve it precisely.
Family — Language, Mind & Meaning-Making (57 abstractions)
Nearest neighbors
- Multivariate Glyph — 0.86
- Tautophrase — 0.84
- Rhyme — 0.84
- Folk Etymology — 0.84
- Verbal Reasoning — 0.83
Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-10-08