ergativealigned

Ergativealigned refers to a language or a descriptive classification of a language that uses ergative alignment as a central organizing principle of its morphosyntax. In ergative-aligned systems, the subject of a transitive verb (the agent) is marked differently from the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb. The latter two share a single form, often called the absolutive. This contrasts with nominative-accusative alignment, where the subject of both intransitive and transitive clauses is treated similarly and the object of a transitive clause is marked differently.

Typical features of ergative alignment include case marking, agreement patterns, or postpositions that distinguish ergative and absolutive functions. In many languages with robust ergativity, the distinction appears in noun phrases through cases or pronouns and can also appear in verb agreement or auxiliary construction. Some languages show split ergativity, where ergative alignment applies in certain grammatical contexts, such as past tense, mood, aspect, or with particular word classes (e.g., pronouns versus full noun phrases).

Geographic and typological distribution is diverse. Ergative alignment is found in languages of the Caucasus, parts of the Americas and the Australian continent, and in several language families that exhibit extensive syntactic variation. It is common for languages to combine ergative features with other alignment tendencies or to switch between ergative and absolutive patterns across tenses or moods.

The term ergativealigned is used in linguistic descriptions to indicate a language that exhibits ergative alignment as a defining or prominent characteristic. It is often discussed alongside split ergativity and other morphosyntactic alignment patterns to capture variation in how languages encode subject and object relations.