instrumentalabsolutive

Instrumentalabsolutive is a term used in linguistic typology to describe a pattern in which instrumental marking and absolutive marking converge or interact in a single morphosyntactic realization. In languages with ergative-absolutive alignment, the absolutive case marks the subject of intransitives and the object of transitives. When a language also encodes the instrumental role—the means by which an action is performed—by the same form, or when the instrument is expressed in a position associated with absolutive marking, some researchers label this arrangement instrumentalabsolutive.

Realizations of instrumentalabsolutive can be morphological, syntactic, or both. Morphologically, a single suffix, clitic, or article may bear both instrumental and absolutive functions, producing syncretism between the two roles. Syntactically, instrument phrases might appear in contexts or positions typically associated with absolutive elements, or they may be integrated into the verb phrase with absolutive agreement markers. In some analyses, the pattern is analyzed as a case syncretism, where one morpheme bears multiple grammatical functions, or as a structural feature of languages with reduced case inventories.

The term is not widely standardized and appears mainly in discussions of case systems, cross-linguistic alignment, or split-ergativity. It is often treated as a potential case of morphological or syntactic syncretism rather than as a common, independently attested typological category. Its utility lies in describing how languages can compress distinct functional roles into a shared morphosyntactic marker under certain historical or structural conditions.

See also: absolutive case, instrumental case, ergativity, case syncretism, split ergativity, cross-linguistic alignment.