To understand morphosyntactic alignment, it is first important to understand transitivity. Verbs typically come in two styles: intransitive and transitive. An intransitive verb can take only one argument, the subject, while a transitive verb can take two arguments, the subject and the direct object. Morphosyntactic alignment refers to how different languages group together the arguments of transitive and intransitive verbs. To be linguistically neutral, we must give separate names to all the arguments. The subject of an intransitive verb, we will call the "Subject (S)"; the subject of a transitive verb, we will call the "Agent (A)"; and the object of a transitive verb, we will call the "Object (O)". To give an example: in the sentences "John sleeps" and "Nathan cooks dinner", John would be (S), Nathan would be (A), and dinner would be (O).

The first and most common form of morphosyntactic alignment is Nominative-Accusative alignment. Languages that use this alignment include English, Spanish, Japanese, and Russian, among others. In Nominative-Accusative languages, the (S) and the (A) are treated the same way in the nominative case while (O) is treated separate in the accusative case. In the English sentences "She jumps" and "She loves her", you can see that (S) and (A) in both sentences take the same nominative form, while (O) takes the separate accusative form.

The second most common form of morphosyntactic alignment is Ergative-Absolutive alignment. Languages that use this alignment include Georgian, Kurdish, and Basque, among others. In Ergative-Absolutive languages, the (S) and the (O) are treated the same way in the Absolutive case while (A) is treated separate in the Ergative case. In Basque, the sentences "I have arrived", "The man has seen me" and "I have read the book" are "Ni (S) etorri naiz", "Gozonak ni (O) ikusi nau" and "Nik (A) liburua irakurri dut". As you can see, it is (S) and (O) that take the same form while (A) is separate. However, most languages that use Ergative-Absolutive alignment feature split-ergativity, which means that they are not always ergative. For instance, the Australian aboriginal language Nhanda, despite being Ergative-Absolutive, uses Nominative-Accusative alignment for their pronouns.

That's all for the first lesson. I'll be back for more either tomorrow or the day after.