Nonergative

Nonergative refers to a linguistic feature found in some languages where verbs do not distinguish between the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb, or vice versa. This contrasts with ergative-absolutive alignment, where the subject of an intransitive verb is marked the same as the object of a transitive verb, and the subject of a transitive verb is marked differently. In nonergative alignment, the subject of an intransitive verb is marked the same as the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb is marked differently.

This type of alignment is sometimes called nominative-accusative alignment, mirroring the alignment found in many Indo-European languages like English. In such systems, the subject of a sentence, whether it's performing an action or simply existing, typically takes the nominative case. The direct object, the entity receiving the action, takes the accusative case.

Nonergative languages, therefore, group intransitive subjects and transitive subjects together, while setting intransitive objects apart from transitive objects. This grammatical classification affects how pronouns, nouns, and verb conjugations are marked within a sentence. While ergativity is a well-documented phenomenon in many languages, nonergative or nominative-accusative alignment is also widespread and represents a common way for languages to organize their grammatical relations. Understanding nonergativity is crucial for comparative linguistics and for comprehending the diverse strategies languages employ to encode sentence structure.