Nominative–accusative alignment

Coding properties of nominative–accusative alignment

Nominative–accusative alignment can manifest itself in visible ways, called coding properties. Often, these visible properties are morphological and the distinction will appear as a difference in the actual morphological form and spelling of the word, or as case particles (pieces of morphology) which will appear before or after the word.

Case marking

If a language exhibits morphological case marking, arguments S and A will appear in the nominative case and argument O will appear in the accusative case, or in a similar case such as the oblique. There may be more than one case fulfilling the accusative role; for instance, Finnish marks objects with the partitive or the accusative to contrast telicity. It is highly common for only accusative arguments to exhibit overt case marking while nominative arguments exhibit null (or absent) case markings. In Modern English, case marking is only found with first and (non-neuter) third person pronouns, which have distinct subject and object forms.

English

I

1SG:SBJ

walked.

walk:PAST

I

1SG:SBJ

saw

see:PAST

them.

3PL:OBJ

Japanese

花瓶が

Kabin-ga(S)

vase-NOM

壊れた

kowareta

broke

‘A vase broke’

私

Watashi(S)

I

は

wa

TOP

花瓶を

kabin-wo(O)

vase-ACC

壊した

kowashita

broke

‘I broke the vase’

Russian

Девушка-Ø

Dyevushka-Ø

(adolescent-/youth-)girl-NOM

работа-ет

rabota-yet

work

‘A/The (adolescent/youth) girl/young lady/young woman works/is working’

Студент-Ø

Studyent-Ø

student-NOM

читает

chitayet

read-3.SG.PRES

книг-у

knig-u

book-ACC

‘A/The student read/is reading a/the book’

Sanskrit

Áśva-ḥ(S)

horse-NOM

aghnata

slain

‘A horse was slain’

Vīrá-ḥ(S)

man-NOM

áśva-m(O)

horse-ACC

ahan

slew

‘The man slew a horse’

Differential object marking (DOM)

Not all arguments are equally likely to exhibit overt case marking. In languages with nominative–accusative alignment, it is common to divide direct objects into two classes (with respect to overt case marking), a phenomenon called ‘differential object marking’ by Bossong (1985).

Word order

Some languages code very little through morphology and are more dependent on syntax to encode meaning and grammatical relationships. If a language relies less on overt case marking, alignment may be coded through word order, as in this example from Indonesian.

Indonesian

saya_i

1SG

me_i-mandi-kan

AT-wash-APPL

pria

man

itu

that

‘I bathe that man’

In the following example from French, all subjects, both S and A, appear before the verb while O appears after the verb. Arguments occurring before the verb are coded as nominative, while arguments occurring directly after the verb are coded as accusative.

French

Je(S)

I-NOM

travaille

work

‘I work’

Je(A)

I-NOM

jette

throw

un

a

ballon(O)

ball-ACC

‘I throw a ball’

Verb agreement

Alternatively, alignment can also manifest visibly through agreement on the verb. In the following example from Amharic, the verb can be head-marked for S, A, and O. Both S in the intransitive clause and A in the transitive clause are marked by the same affix (-ə ‘3SG.M’), while O in the transitive clause is marked by a different affix (-w ‘3SG.M.O’).

Amharic

intransitive

Ləmma

Lemma

hed-ə

go.PFV-3SG.M

‘Lemma came’

transitive

Ləmma

Lemma

t’ərmus-u-n

bottle-DEF-ACC

səbbər-ə-w

break.PFV-3SG.M-3SG.M.O

‘Lemma breaks the bottle’

English has residual verb agreement with nominative–accusative alignment, which is only manifest with third person singular S and A in present tense.

Behavioral properties of accusativity

Nominative–accusative alignment can also be distinguished through behavioral properties, in the way a nominative or accusative argument will behave when placed in particular syntactic constructions. This has to do with the impact of alignment on the level of the whole sentence rather than the individual word. Morphosyntactic alignment determines which arguments can be omitted in a coordinate structure during the process of conjunction reduction (deleting arguments from the ends of joined clauses). In nominative–accusative, only arguments S and A can be omitted and not argument O.

English

a. Sue-NOM_i saw Judy-ACC_j , and she_i/j ran.

b. Sue_i saw Judy_j and ____i/*j ran.

c. Sue_i saw Judy_j, and she_i/j was frightened.

d. Sue_i saw Judy_j and ____i/*j was frightened.

The omitted subject argument of the embedded clause must correspond to the subject (nominative) of the matrix-clause. If it corresponds to the object (accusative), the sentence is ungrammatical.

If English were an ergative–absolutive language, one would expect to see:

b’. Sue_i saw Judy_j, and ____*i/j ran.

c’. Sue_i saw Judy_j, and ____*i/j was frightened.

Here the omitted argument of the embedded clause corresponds to the direct object (absolutive) of the matrix-clause. If it corresponds to the subject (ergative), the sentence is ungrammatical.

The alignment system also impacts the triggering and realization of other such syntactic processes as raising constructions, subject-controlled subject deletion and object-controlled subject deletion.

Distribution

Languages exhibiting accusative alignment are the most widespread of all of the alignment types. These languages can be found on every continent, in comparison to languages with ergative alignment that are restricted to certain areas of the world, namely the Caucasus, parts of North and South America, the Tibetan plateau, and Australia. The map shows the distribution of languages with the various alignment types, and the following list gives a short sampling of accusative languages and their distribution across the globe:

Relevant theory

Optimality theory

One of the ways in which the production of a nominative–accusative case marking system can be explained is from an Optimality Theoretic perspective. Case marking is said to fulfill two functions, or constraints: an identifying function and a distinguishing function. The identifying function is exemplified when case morphology encodes (identifies) specific semantic, thematic, or pragmatic properties or information about the nominal argument. Accusative case in the position of the direct object, for example, can be a strong identifier of patienthood. The distinguishing function is used to distinguish between the core arguments, the subject and the object, of a transitive clause. Helen de Hoop and Andrej Malchukov explain the motivation and need for the distinguishing function in "Case marking strategies":

When a two-place predicate R(x,y) is used to describe an event involving two participants, usually an agent and a patient, it is of utmost importance to avoid ambiguity as to which noun phrase corresponds to the first argument x (the agent) and which to the second argument y (the patient). For this purpose, case can be used to mark one of the arguments. If one argument is case marked, this already suffices for the purpose of disambiguation. Thus, from the distinguishing perspective, there is no need to case mark both arguments. Neither would it be necessary to case mark the one and only argument of a one-place (intransitive) predicate. Indeed, it has been argued that in many nominative–accusative case systems only the y is case marked (with accusative case) while the x remains morphologically unmarked.

It is rare for case to serve only the distinguishing function, which overlaps greatly with the ‘identify’ function. Other ways of disambiguating the arguments of a transitive predicate (subject agreement, word order restriction, context, intonation, etc.) may explain this cross-linguistic observation. De Hoop and Malchukov argue that case systems that are completely based on the identification function must be richer in case morphology compared to languages based mainly on the distinguishing function.

Functional pressure

One theory that has been posited to account for the occurrence of accusative systems is that of functional pressure. When applied to languages, this theory operates around the various needs and pressures on a speech community. It has been suggested that languages have evolved to suit the needs of their users.These communities will develop some functional system to meet the needs that they have. So, it has been proposed that the accusative system arose from a functional pressure to avoid ambiguity and make communication a simpler process.

It is useful for languages to have a means of distinguishing between subjects and objects, and between arguments A, S, and O. This is helpful so that sentences like "Tom hit Fred" cannot be interpreted as "Fred hit Tom." Tripartite alignment systems accomplish this differentiation by coding S, A and O all differently. However, this is not structurally economical, and tripartite systems are comparatively rare, but to have all arguments marked the same makes the arguments too ambiguous. Alongside the principle of distinguishability seems to operate a principle of economy. It is more efficient to have as few cases as possible without compromising intelligibility. In this way the dual pressures of efficiency and economy have produced a system which patterns two kinds of arguments together a third separately. Both accusative and ergative systems use this kind of grouping to make meaning clearer.