ergatiivinabsolutiivinen

Ergatiivinabsolutiivinen is a grammatical alignment system found in some languages, particularly in the indigenous languages of the Caucasus and some Australian Aboriginal languages. In this system, the subject of a transitive verb is marked with the ergative case, while the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are both marked with the absolutive case. This contrasts with nominative-accusative alignment, where the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs is marked with the nominative case, and the object of a transitive verb is marked with the accusative case.

The ergative case typically indicates the agent or doer of an action, while the absolutive case marks the patient or the entity being acted upon, or in the case of intransitive verbs, the sole participant in the action. For example, in a hypothetical ergatiivinabsolutiivinen language, a sentence like "The dog chased the cat" might be structured such that "dog" is in the ergative case, while "cat" is in the absolutive case. A sentence like "The dog ran" would have "dog" in the absolutive case.

The ergatiivinabsolutiivinen alignment can also extend to other grammatical features, such as pronoun paradigms and verb agreement. While it is not as common as nominative-accusative alignment, it represents a significant variation in how languages structure their grammatical relations. The study of ergatiivinabsolutiivinen systems is important for understanding the diversity of human language and the various ways in which grammatical roles can be encoded.