haiglatetype

Haiglatetype is a term used in linguistic typology to describe a proposed class of morphosyntactic systems in which languages combine argument-marking and predicate agreement in ways that do not fit the standard nominative–accusative or ergative–absolutive patterns. The term is not widely attested and appears mainly in theoretical discussions and simulations within the literature on cross-linguistic variation.

Definition and features: In haiglatetype systems, nominal case marking often shows a strong coupling with animacy or definiteness, producing structured marking on noun phrases that can vary across contexts. Verbal morphology exhibits person–number agreement that can correlate with transitivity in some clauses but diverges in others. The alignment can shift between clause types, producing mixed or split patterns. Some haiglatetype grammars also show rich agreement on pronouns and function words, along with cross-clausal dependencies that resist simple categorization.

Origin and usage: The term is primarily used in speculative or model-based work intended to explore typological space and to test computational parsers against non-canonical alignment patterns. It is not established as a standard cross-language category and remains a topic of debate among linguists. Some scholars argue that haiglatetype captures a real, coherent typological phenomenon, while others caution that it may aggregate diverse phenomena under a single label.

Examples: There are no universally cited attested natural-language examples; researchers typically illustrate haiglatetype with constructed or hypothetical languages to demonstrate theoretical possibilities.

See also: linguistic typology, language family, ergativity, nominative–accusative, split-ergativity, alignment.