This usually means the following: The first two characteristics have to do with simple morphosyntax, and from them, it is quite obvious the syntactic pivot in English (and most other European languages) is called the subject.
The result would be ungrammatical or have a different meaning: The syntactic pivot is a feature of the morphosyntactic alignment of the language.
In nominative–accusative languages, the syntactic pivot is the so-called "subject" (the argument marked with the nominative case).
In ergative–absolutive languages, the syntactic pivot may be the argument marked with the absolutive case but not always so since ergative languages are often not "pure" and show a mixed behaviour (they can have ergative morphology and accusative syntax).
Languages with a passive voice construction may resort to it to allow the default syntactic pivot to shift its semantic role (from agent to patient) in a coordinated proposition: