Editing Marked nominative alignment

{{About|the alignment type with a marked nominative and unmarked accusative case|the alignment type attested in some [[indigenous languages of South America|South American indigenous languages]] in which the intransitive subject patterns both as a [[nominative–accusative language|nominative]] and as an [[ergative–absolutive language|absolutive]] argument|nominative–absolutive alignment}}

{{More citations needed|date=March 2017}}
{{linguistic typology topics}}

In [[linguistic typology]], '''marked nominative alignment''' is an unusual type of [[morphosyntactic alignment]] similar to, and often considered a subtype of, a [[nominative–accusative language|nominative–accusative]] alignment. In a prototypical nominative–accusative language with a [[grammatical case]] system like [[Latin]], the object of a verb is marked for [[accusative case]], and the subject of the verb may or may not be marked for [[nominative case]]. The nominative, whether or not it is marked morphologically, is also used as the citation form of the noun. In a marked nominative system, on the other hand, it is the nominative case alone that is usually marked morphologically, and it is the unmarked accusative case that is used as the citation form of the noun.<ref name=Dixon1994>Dixon 1994, pp. 63–67</ref> The unmarked accusative (sometimes called [[absolutive case|absolutive]]) is typically also used with a wide range of other functions that are associated with the nominative in nominative-accusative languages; they often include the [[subject complement]] and a subject moved to a more prominent place in the sentence in order to express topic or focus.<ref>{{cite book |last=König |first=Christa |year=2008 |title=Case in Africa |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref>

==Distribution==

Marked nominative languages are relatively rare. They are well-documented in only two regions of the world: in northern Africa, where they occur in many languages of the [[Cushitic languages|Cushitic]], [[Omotic languages|Omotic]] and [[Berber languages|Berber]] branches of the [[Afroasiatic languages|Afroasiatic]] family, as well as in the [[Surmic languages|Surmic]] and [[Nilotic languages]] of the [[Eastern Sudanic languages|Eastern Sudanic]] family;<ref>{{cite book |last=König |first=Christa |year=2008 |title=Case in Africa |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref> and in the southwestern United States and adjacent parts of Mexico, where they are characteristic of the [[Yuman languages|Yuman]] family. Other languages interpreted by some authors as having a marked nominative system include [[Igbo language|Igbo]], [[Aymara language|Aymara]] and [[Wappo language|Wappo]]. It is also proposed that marked-nominative alignment can be reconstructed for the ancestor of the [[Afroasiatic languages]], viz. [[Proto-Afroasiatic language|Proto-Afroasiatic]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Satzinger |first=Helmut |year=2018 |chapter=Did Proto-Afroasiatic have Marked Nominative or Nominative-Accusative Alignment? |title=Afroasiatic: Data and perspectives |editor-last=Tosco |editor-first=Mauro |location=Amsterdam |publisher=John Benjamins |pages=11–22 |isbn=9789027264572 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s7VGDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11}} Open-access [https://homepage.univie.ac.at/helmut.satzinger/Texte/MarkedNominative.pdf preprint version] available.</ref>

In Yuman and many of the Cushitic languages, however, the nominative is not always marked for reasons that are not known. There may, therefore, be not a strict case system but a reflection of discourse patterns or other non-[[semantics|semantic]] parameters. However, the Yuman language [[Havasupai language|Havasupai]] is reported to have a purely syntactic case system, with a suffix ''-č'' marking all subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs but not of the copula; in the Nilotic language [[Datooga language|Datooga]], the system is also reported to be purely syntactic.

As in many Nilotic languages, Datooga case is marked by tone. The absolutive case has the unpredictable tone of the citation form of the noun, but the nominative is marked by a characteristic tone that obliterates the lexical tone. The tone is high for words of three syllables or less; for words with four or more syllables, the ends of the word have high tone, with a low tone in the middle of the word.

In most African languages with a marked nominative, the nominative is used for subjects following the verb, the absolutive with the copula, with subjects in focus position before the verb, and in all other situations.

[[Okinawan language|Okinawan]], a [[Japonic language]], is generally a marked nominative language where nominative subjects are marked with the case particles ''ga'' or ''nu'' depending on their level of [[animacy]]. Unmarked nouns are by default in the accusative case. However, some verbs of existence and emergence may also have optionally unmarked nominative subjects.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics|first=Michinori|last=Shimoji|year=2018|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9781316884461|series=Cambridge Handbooks of Linguistics|editor-last=Hasegawa|editor-first=Yoko|doi=10.1017/9781316884461|chapter=Okinawan|pages=104–107}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Morphosyntactic alignment]]
* [[Active–stative alignment|Active language]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
* {{cite book |last=Dixon |first=Robert M. W. |authorlink=Robert M. W. Dixon |year=1994 |title=Ergativity |url=https://archive.org/details/ergativity0000dixo |url-access=registration |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
* Hinton, Leanne (1984). ''Havasupai songs : a linguistic perspective''
* Kießling, Roland (2007). "The 'marked nominative' in Datooga", ''Journal of African languages and linguistics,'' vol. 28, no2, pp.&nbsp;149–191
* Suda, Junichi (2025). “''The'' ''Late-Klimov Model'' for Typological Classification of Active, Ergative, and Nominative Languages ― Re-evaluation of ''the Five Macroroles Model'', et al.”. ''Typological Studies'' 7: 83-109.
* ''The World Atlas of Language Structures Online''[http://wals.info/feature/98]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nominative-absolutive language}}
[[Category:Linguistic typology]]