Editing Nominative–accusative alignment (section)

==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<sub>i</sub> saw Judy-ACC<sub>j</sub> , and she<sub>i/j</sub> ran.
:b. Sue<sub>i</sub> saw Judy<sub>j</sub> and ___<sub>i/*j</sub> ran.
:c. Sue<sub>i</sub> saw Judy<sub>j</sub>, and she<sub>i/j</sub> was frightened.
:d. Sue<sub>i</sub> saw Judy<sub>j</sub> and ___<sub>i/*j</sub> 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<sub>i</sub> saw Judy<sub>j</sub>, and ___<sub>*i/j</sub> ran.
:c’. Sue<sub>i</sub> saw Judy<sub>j</sub>, and ___<sub>*i/j</sub> 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 (syntax)|raising]] constructions, [[control (linguistics)|subject-controlled subject deletion]] and [[control (linguistics)|object-controlled subject deletion]].