In
linguistic typology
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...
, active–stative alignment (also split intransitive alignment or semantic alignment) is a type of
morphosyntactic alignment
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument of ...
in which the sole
argument
An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persu ...
("subject") of an
intransitive
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additi ...
clause (often symbolized as ''S'') is sometimes marked in the same way as an
agent of a
transitive verb
A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...
(that is, like a
subject such as "I" or "she" in
English) but other times in the same way as a direct object (such as "me" or "her" in English). Languages with active–stative alignment are often called ''active languages''.
The
case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Instances
* Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design
* Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of relate ...
or
agreement of the intransitive argument (''S'') depends on semantic or lexical criteria particular to each language. The criteria tend to be based on the degree of
volition, or control over the verbal action exercised by the participant.
For example, if one tripped and fell, an active–stative language might require one to say the equivalent of "fell me." To say "I fell" would mean that the person had done it on purpose, such as taking a fall in boxing. Another possibility is empathy; for example, if someone's dog were run over by a car, one might say the equivalent of "died her." To say "she died" would imply that the person was not affected emotionally.
If the core arguments of a transitive clause are termed ''A'' (
agent of a transitive verb) and ''P'' (
patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by Health professional, healthcare professionals. The patient is most often Disease, ill or Major trauma, injured and in need of therapy, treatment by a physician, nurse, op ...
of a transitive verb), active–stative languages can be described as languages that align intransitive ''S'' as ''S = P/O∗∗'' ("fell me") or ''S = A'' ("I fell"), depending on the criteria described above.
Active–stative languages contrast with
accusative languages such as English that generally align ''S'' as ''S = A'', and with
ergative languages that generally align ''S'' as ''S = P/O''. From this we can deduce that there are two types of ''S'' in Active languages. On the other hand, in Ergative languages some types of ''O/P'' can be ''O/P=A'', and in this respect, we have to consider that there are also two types of ''O'' in Ergative languages. Active languages can be said to be a phenomenon at the intersection of these complex issues.
Types
For most such languages, the case of the intransitive argument is lexically fixed for each verb, regardless of the actual degree of volition of the subject, but often corresponding to the most typical situation. For example, the argument of ''swim'' may always be treated like the transitive subject (
agent-like), and the argument of ''sleep'' like the transitive direct object (
patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by Health professional, healthcare professionals. The patient is most often Disease, ill or Major trauma, injured and in need of therapy, treatment by a physician, nurse, op ...
-like). In
Dakota, arguments of active verbs such as ''to run'' are marked like transitive agents, as in accusative languages, and arguments of inactive verbs such as ''to stand'' are marked like transitive objects, as in ergative languages. In such language, if the subject of a verb like ''run'' or ''swallow'' is defined as agentive, it will be always marked so even if the action of swallowing is involuntary. This subtype is sometimes known as split-S.
In other languages, the marking of the intransitive argument is decided by the speaker, based on semantic considerations. For any given intransitive verb, the speaker may choose whether to mark the argument as agentive or patientive. In some of these languages, agentive marking encodes a degree of
volition or control over the action, with the
patientive used as the default case; in others, patientive marking encodes a lack of volition or control, suffering from or being otherwise affected by the action, or sympathy on the part of the speaker, with the agentive used as the default case. These two subtypes (''patientive-default'' and ''agentive-default'') are sometimes known as fluid-S.
Argument marking
If the language has
morphological case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Instances
* Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design
* Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of relate ...
, the arguments of a
transitive verb
A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...
are marked by using the agentive case for the subject and the patientive case for the object. The argument of an
intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Add ...
may be marked as either.
Languages lacking case
inflection
In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...
s may indicate case by different
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...
s,
verb agreement, using
adposition
Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositions (which precede their complemen ...
s, etc. For example, the patientive argument might precede the
verb
A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...
, and the agentive argument might follow the verb.
Cross-linguistically, the agentive argument tends to be marked, and the patientive argument tends to be unmarked. That is, if one case is indicated by zero-inflection, it is often the patientive.
Additionally, active languages differ from ergative languages in how split case marking intersects with Silverstein's (1976) nominal hierarchy:
:pronouns (1st>2nd>3rd person) > proper nouns > common nouns (human > animate > inanimate)
Specifically, ergative languages with split case marking are more likely to use ergative rather than accusative marking for NPs lower down the hierarchy (to the right), whereas active languages are more likely to use active marking for NPs higher up the hierarchy (to the left), like first and second person pronouns. Dixon states that "In active languages, if active marking applies to an NP type a, it applies to every NP type to the left of a on the nominal hierarchy."
Terminology
Active languages are a relatively new field of study. Active
morphosyntactic alignment
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument of ...
used to be not recognized as such, and it was treated mostly as an interesting deviation from the standard alternatives (nominative–accusative and ergative–absolutive). Also, active languages are few and often show complications and special cases ("pure" active alignment is an ideal).
Thus, the terminology used is rather flexible. The morphosyntactic alignment of active languages is also termed ''active–stative alignment'' or ''semantic alignment''. The terms
''agentive case'' and
''patientive case'' used above are sometimes replaced by the terms ''active'' and ''inactive''.
Occurrence
(†) = extinct language
South American languages
*
Northern Jê languages (split-S in finite clauses, central and north-eastern Brazil), including:
**
Apinayé (Oliveira 2003)
**
Timbira language continuum (Castro Alves 2010)
*
Tupi–Guarani languages
Tupi–Guarani (/tuːˈpiː ɡwɑˈrɑːni/ /ɡwɑˈɾɑ-/; Tupi-Guarani: uˈpi ɡwaɾaˈni ) is the most widely distributed subfamily of the Tupian languages of South America. It consists of about fifty languages, including Guarani and Ol ...
(Brazil, Bolivia, French Guiana, Paraguay, Peru), including:
** †
Old Tupi
Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi () is a classical Tupian language which was spoken by the indigenous Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. In the words of Brazilian tupinol ...
and †Tupinambá (fluid-S)
**
Sirionó (eastern Bolivia)
**
Kamayurá (split-S, Brazil)
**
Guaraní (split-S, with a few verbs allowing fluid-S marking, Paraguay)
* Many
Arawakan languages
Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient Indigenous peoples in South America. Branc ...
, including:
**
Waurá (split-S, spoken in Brazil)
**
Baniwa do Içana (fluid-S; upper Rio Negro, Brazil)
** Lokono
Central America/Mesoamerican languages
* In Mexico:
Chocho and
Amuzgo are active languages of the split-S type, with some verbs showing fluid-S alignment; Chol (Mayan) is Split-S
* In Panama & Colombia:
Chibchan language Ikan (split-S)
North American languages
* In the south and south-east US
**
Gulf languages
A gulf is a large inlet from an ocean or their seas into a landmass, larger and typically (though not always) with a narrower opening than a bay. The term was used traditionally for large, highly indented navigable bodies of salt water that a ...
***
Muskogee (also known as Creek)
***
Hichiti
***
Koasati
***
Choctaw
The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...
(fluid-S on verbs and accusative marking on nouns)
***A subgroup of Muskogean languages such as
Chickasaw
The Chickasaw ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is ...
(In South Central Oklahoma)
**
Euchee (Yuchi) (in northeastern Oklahoma, historically in Tennessee)
**
Tunica (†) (or Tonica) a
language isolate
A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
* In the central US
**
Siouan languages
Siouan ( ), also known as Siouan–Catawban ( ), is a language family of North America located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.
Name
Authors who ...
***
Omaha
Omaha ( ) is the List of cities in Nebraska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Nebraska. It is located in the Midwestern United States along the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's List of United S ...
***
Biloxi
Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States. It lies on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast in southern Mississippi, bordering the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, Gulfport to its west. The adjacent cities ar ...
(†)
***
Ofo (†)
***
Osage
***
Winnebago
***
Crow
A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly, a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not linked scientifically to any certain trait but is rathe ...
(fluid-S)
***
Ioway (split-S)
***
Hidatsa
***
Dakota (split-S)
***
Ponca
The Ponca people are a nation primarily located in the Great Plains of North America that share a common Ponca culture, history, and language, identified with two Indigenous nations: the Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma or the Ponca Tribe of ...
***
Tutelo
The Tutelo (also Totero, Totteroy, Tutera; Yesan in Tutelo) were Native American people living above the Fall Line in present-day Virginia and West Virginia. They spoke a dialect of the Siouan Tutelo language thought to be similar to that of th ...
***
Assiniboine
The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...
***
Mandan
The Mandan () are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still ...
(split-S)
***
Lakhota (split-S)
* In the Great Plains (east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada)
**
Caddoan languages
The Caddoan languages are a family of languages native to the Great Plains spoken by tribal groups of the central United States, from present-day North Dakota south to Oklahoma. All Caddoan languages are critically endangered, as the number of sp ...
***
Caddo
The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language.
The Caddo Confederacy was a network of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, who ...
***
Wichita (ergative, accusative and S-split mixed type) (†)
***
Kitsai (also known as Kichai) (†)
***
Arikara
The Arikara ( ), also known as Sahnish,
''Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.'' (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011) ...
(Split-S; also known as Ree)
***
Pawnee Pawnee initially refers to a Native American people and its language:
* Pawnee people
* Pawnee language
Pawnee is also the name of several places in the United States:
* Pawnee, Illinois
* Pawnee, Kansas
* Pawnee, Missouri
* Pawnee City, Nebraska
* ...
* In Eastern North America
**Iroquoian languages
***
Mohawk (Ontario, Quebec and northern New York)
***
Seneca (Split-S; Western New York and the Six Nations Reserve, Ontario)
***
Huron (called also as Wyandot, spoken in northeastern Oklahoma, Quebec)
***
Oneida (spoken in Six Nations Reserve, Ontario; central New York and around Green Bay, Wisconsin)
***
Onondaga (Split-S type, spoken in Six Nations Reserve, Ontario, and western New York)
***
Susquehannock
The Susquehannock, also known as the Conestoga, Minquas, and Andaste, were an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian people who lived in the lower Susquehanna River watershed in what is now Pennsylvania. Their name means “people of the muddy river.”
T ...
(†)
***
Cayuga (spoken on Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario, by around 100 people)
***
Tuscarora (southern Ontario, Tuscarora Reservation in northwestern New York, and eastern North Carolina)
***
Nottoway (Virginia) (†)
***
Cherokee
The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...
(Oklahoma, North Carolina)
* Western North America (in Canada, Alaska, Southern Rocky Mountains, Pacific shore of the US including California)
**
Na-dene languages
Na-Dene ( ; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now genera ...
***
Haida
***
Tlingit
***
Eyak († since 2008)
***
Slave
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
***
Chiracahua Apache
**
Pomoan languages
The Pomoan, or Pomo , languages are a small family of seven languages indigenous to northern California spoken by the Pomo people, whose ancestors lived in the valley of the Russian River (California), Russian River and the Clear Lake (California ...
***
Eastern Pomo
Eastern Pomo, also known as Clear Lake Pomo, is a nearly extinct Pomoan language spoken around Clear Lake in Lake County, California by one of the Pomo peoples.
It is not mutually intelligible with the other Pomoan languages. Before contact ...
(fluid-S, Northern California)
***
Central Pomo
***
Northern Pomo
***
Southeastern Pomo
***
Kashaya
South and Southeast Asia
* Austronesian languages
**
Acehnese (spoken in
Aceh
Aceh ( , ; , Jawi script, Jawoë: ; Van Ophuijsen Spelling System, Old Spelling: ''Atjeh'') is the westernmost Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia. It is located on the northern end of Sumatra island, with Banda Aceh being its capit ...
, Indonesia and
Perak
Perak (; Perak Malay: ''Peghok'') is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Perak has land borders with the Malaysian states of Kedah to the north, Penang to the northwest, Kel ...
, Malaysia) is of fluid-S type
**
Kuanua (spoken by the
Tolai on the island of
New Britain
New Britain () is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from New Guinea by a northwest corner of the Solomon Sea (or with an island hop of Umboi Island, Umboi the Dampie ...
) is of a split-S type
**many active languages of Central branch of this family are spoken in Eastern Indonesia
*
Papuan languages
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...
:
Yawa (Split-S)
*
Tibeto-Burman languages
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spe ...
: spoken Tibetan (fluid-S)
Caucasus
*
Georgian (spoken in the Caucasian nation of
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States
Georgia may also refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
): generally considered a
split ergative language, but
Alice Harris has claimed that it shows active alignment in some verb paradigms (namely, that the ergative marker appears to apply to active-intransitive verbs; also stative experiencers take a different case marking and agreement pattern). However, even that is complicated by the existence of apparently-inactive intransitive verbs taking such marking, such as the verb meaning 'to boil'. Other
Kartvelian languages
The Kartvelian languages ( ; ka, ქართველური ენები, tr; also known as South Caucasian or Kartvelic languages Boeder (2002), p. 3) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primarily in Geor ...
such
Laz,
Svan, and
Old Georgian show similar systems, while the position of
Mingrelian is more controversial.
*
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or Vainakh-Daghestani, or sometimes Caspian languages (from the Caspian Sea, in contrast to ''Pontic languages'' for the Northwest Caucasian languages), is a langu ...
:
Tsova-Tush: according to Holisky (1987), there are 31 intransitive verbs for which the argument is always marked as patientive and refer to uncontrollable states ("be hungry", "tremble", etc.), and 78 intransitive verbs with an agentive argument ("walk", "talk", "think"). They form a split-S subset of the verbs. The rest of the verbs form a fluid-S system; for instance, a single verb root can be interpreted as "slip" when it is used with a patientive argument and as "slide" with an agentive argument.
*
Tabasaran
Siberia
*
Ket, a
Yeniseian language (split-S)
*
Yukaghir languages (fluid-S, based on
focus
Focus (: foci or focuses) may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in East Australia Film
*Focus (2001 film), ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based on the Arthur Miller novel
*Focus (2015 ...
and discourse-pragmatic factors)
Reconstructed proto-languages
According to Castro Alves (2010), a split-S alignment can be safely reconstructed for Proto-Northern Jê finite clauses. Clauses headed by a non-finite verb, on the contrary, would have been aligned
ergatively in this reconstructed language.
The reconstructed
Pre-Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Eur ...
language,
not to be confused with the
Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Eu ...
, its direct descendant, shows many features known to correlate with active alignment like the animate vs. inanimate distinction, related to the distinction between active and inactive or stative verb arguments. Even in its descendant languages, there are traces of a morphological split between volitional and nonvolitional verbs, such as a pattern in verbs of perception and cognition where the argument takes an oblique case (called
quirky subject), a relic of which can be seen in
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...
''methinks'' or in the distinction between ''see'' vs. ''look'' or ''hear'' vs. ''listen''. Other possible relics from a structure, in descendant languages of Indo-European, include conceptualization of possession and extensive use of particles.
See also
*
Ambitransitive verb An ambitransitive verb is a verb that is both intransitive and transitive.Dixon, R.M.W. & Aikhenvald, Alexendra Y. Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity. Cambridge University Press. This verb may or may not require a direct object. Engli ...
*
Case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Instances
* Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design
* Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of relate ...
*
Diathesis alternation
*
Ergative-absolutive language
*
Labile verb
*
Morphosyntactic alignment
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument of ...
*
Nominative-absolutive language (Marked nominative alignment)
*
Nominative-accusative language
*
Unaccusative verb
In linguistics, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb whose grammatical subject is not a semantics, semantic agent (grammar), agent. In other words, the subject does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action expre ...
*
Unergative verb
An unergative verb is an intransitive verb that is characterized semantically by having a subject argument which is an ''agent'' that actively initiates the action expressed by the verb.
For example, in English, ''talk'' and ''resign'' in the ...
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
**
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* 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.
Further reading
*Bentley, D. (2011) ''Split intransitivity in Italian''. De Gruyter Mouton.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Active-stative language
Grammar
Syntax–semantics interface