Topic summary
Ergative language
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Ergative–absolutive alignment.
Distribution of ergative languages
A World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) sample of 190 languages found 32 (17%) of languages use an ergative alignment in the marking of noun phrases. Prototypical ergative languages are, for the most part, restricted to specific regions of the world: Mesopotamia (Kurdish, and some extinct languages), the Caucasus, the Americas, the Tibetan Plateau, and Australia and parts of New Guinea.