Nominative–accusative alignment
It has a wide global distribution and is the most common alignment system among the world's languages (including English).
English has nominative–accusative alignment in its case marking of personal pronouns:[1] the single argument (S) of an intransitive verb ("I" in the sentence "I walked.")
It is common for languages (such as Georgian and Hindustani) to have overlapping alignment systems, which exhibit both nominative–accusative and ergative–absolutive coding, a phenomenon called split ergativity.
In fact, there are relatively few languages that exhibit only ergative–absolutive alignment (called pure ergativity) and tend to be isolated in certain regions of the world, such as the Caucasus, parts of North America and Mesoamerica, the Tibetan Plateau, and Australia.
In Modern English, case marking is only found with first and (non-neuter) third person pronouns, which have distinct subject and object forms.
English I1SG:SBJwalked.walk:PASTI walked.1SG:SBJ walk:PASTI1SG:SBJsawsee:PASTthem.3PL:OBJI saw them.1SG:SBJ see:PAST 3PL:OBJJapanese 花瓶がKabin-ga(S)vase-NOM壊れたkowaretabroke[3] 花瓶が 壊れたKabin-ga(S) kowaretavase-NOM broke‘A vase broke’私はWatashi-wa(S)I-NOM花瓶をkabin-wo(O)vase-ACC壊したkowashitabroke私は 花瓶を 壊したWatashi-wa(S) kabin-wo(O) kowashitaI-NOM vase-ACC broke‘I broke the vase’Russian Девушка-ØDyevushka-Ø(adolescent-/youth-)girl-NOMработа-етrabota-yetworkДевушка-Ø работа-етDyevushka-Ø rabota-yet(adolescent-/youth-)girl-NOM work‘A/The (adolescent/youth) girl/young lady/young woman works/is working’Студент-ØStudyent-Østudent-NOMчитаетchitayetread-3.SG.PRESкниг-уknig-ubook-ACCСтудент-Ø читает книг-уStudyent-Ø chitayet knig-ustudent-NOM read-3.SG.PRES book-ACC‘A/The student read/is reading a/the book’Sanskrit Áśva-ḥ(S)horse-NOMaghnataslainÁśva-ḥ(S) aghnatahorse-NOM slain‘A horse was slain’Vīrá-ḥ(S)man-NOMáśva-m(O)horse-ACCahanslewVīrá-ḥ(S) áśva-m(O) ahanman-NOM horse-ACC slew‘The man slew a horse’Not all arguments are equally likely to exhibit overt case marking.
[5] Nominative–accusative alignment can also be distinguished through behavioral properties, in the way a nominative or accusative argument will behave when placed in particular syntactic constructions.
If English were an ergative–absolutive language, one would expect to see: Here the omitted argument of the embedded clause corresponds to the direct object (absolutive) of the matrix-clause.
The map shows the distribution of languages with the various alignment types, and the following list gives a short sampling of accusative languages and their distribution across the globe:[6] North America: Australasia: South America: Europe: Africa: Asia: One of the ways in which the production of a nominative–accusative case marking system can be explained is from an Optimality Theoretic perspective.
Helen de Hoop and Andrej Malchukov explain the motivation and need for the distinguishing function in "Case marking strategies": When a two-place predicate R(x,y) is used to describe an event involving two participants, usually an agent and a patient, it is of utmost importance to avoid ambiguity as to which noun phrase corresponds to the first argument x (the agent) and which to the second argument y (the patient).
Other ways of disambiguating the arguments of a transitive predicate (subject agreement, word order restriction, context, intonation, etc.)
So, it has been proposed that the accusative system arose from a functional pressure to avoid ambiguity and make communication a simpler process.
In this way the dual pressures of efficiency and economy have produced a system which patterns two kinds of arguments together a third separately.
