Feature 28. Marking of arguments and alignment

found in question(s): 63a, 63b, 63c, 64a, 64b, 65a, 65b, 66

Definition and illustration

This feature addresses different argument marking strategies as discussed in the typological literature (e.g., Dixon 1994; Croft 2022, among others).

Question 63 addresses the type of marking (using the traditional terminology of head- and dependent-marking established by Nichols 1986). This is checked for intransitive (question 63a), transitive (question 63b), and ditransitive clauses (question 63c).

Question 64 addresses the alignment (e.g., accusative, ergative, neutral), distinguishing between nominal (question 64a) and pronominal arguments (question 64b). This distinction is necessary as there are languages where case marking is restricted to pronominal forms, e.g. English or Bwamu (see below). In languages with accusative alignment, often the O argument is marked, whereas the S or A argument remains unmarked. However, in some languages like Oromo (marked-nominative languages) have an overt marker for the S and A argument instead (see the references in Hölzl 2025b).

Question 65 focuses on syntactic alignment in the combination of intransitive and transitive clauses (making use of the term "pivot" as proposed by Dixon 1994).

Question 66 asks about the presence of differential object marking (or other types of argument marking splits). If a language exhibits differential object marking (or other types of splits), one of the two marking strategies usually allows a different range of word order possibilities (also see Seržant et al. preprint on so-called positional differential argument marking).

These questions can be illustrated with data provided by Mouwéré Bognana on the Gur language Bwamu. Bwamu makes use of dependent-marking with case (on pronouns) as well as of adpositions (collectively referred to as flagging, Haspelmath 2019). There is no head-marking (e.g., in person or number). For nominal arguments, the alignment of intransitive and transitive clauses is neutral with all three arguments being equally unmarked (S=A=O). The alignment of transitive and ditransitive clauses shows neutral (T=O=G) or indirective alignment with only the G argument being optionally marked with a dative postposition ji (T=O;G).

(1) Bwamu

(2) Bwamu

(3) Bwamu

For pronouns, the alignment is different as there are suppletive accusative forms. For instance, the third person form wo is used for the S and A function.

(4) Bwamu

However, special accusative forms are employed for the O argument. In the first person, this accusative form is mi instead of ĩ.

(5) Bwamu

(6) Bwamu

The second person has fo instead of ũ and the third person a instead of wo.

(7) Bwamu

(8) Bwamu

Thus, there is accusative alignment within the pronominal system (S=A;O). Given the distinction between unmarked (nomimal) and marked (pronominal) objects, there is also differential object marking.

Coordinating an intransitive and a transitive clause that share the subject is possible. In the following example, the shared argument wo ɓa 'the man' is the S argument in the first and the A argument in the second clause. Since it can be left out in the second clause, the language exhibits an S/A pivot.

(9) Bwamu

But Bwamu has no S/O pivot (or syntactic ergativity) as the argument wo ɓa 'the man' cannot act as S argument in the first and O argument in the second clause.

(10) Bwamu

Correlations

There is a (diachronic) connection of OV order and the presence of case marking (Shcherbakova et al. 2024; Hölzl preprint).

Languages with SVO order tend to have zero marking instead (Sinnemäki 2010).

Ergativity seems to be more common in languages with OV order (see the references in Hölzl 2025a).

Given the possible connection of ergativity with OV order, it could be the case that S/O pivots are also more common in languages with OV order (cf. Dixon 1994).

References