Talk:Nominative–accusative alignment

what is this on about?

what is this on about? I don't understand a WORD! surely an encyclopaedia is supposed to be something for those that don't alrerady have a PHD in the subject! :S

I offer you my heartfelt empathy. Although I understand what this article tries to explain, a HUGE portion of it entails unfortunate and/or misleading use of taxons, mistaken assumptions about certain grammatical origins, and convoluted examples. Here is my humble attempt at a bit of clarity: A nominative-accusative language relates to a language that is marked by the following order -

1. A nominative subject (i.e., a person or thing that occurs at the head of a sentence).
2. An accusative verb (i.e. a transitive verb) that complements the nominative subject.
3. An accusative object (i.e., a person or thing) that is expressed by the accusative verb.

Here are some parsed examples:

"I want candy." (I = nominative subject; want = accusative verb; candy = accusative object)
"We enjoy this." (We = nominative subject/subject pronoun; enjoy = accusative verb; this = accusative object/demonstrative object pronoun)
"Read my lips." (YOU as implicit nominative subject; read = accusative verb; my lips = accusative object/accusative noun phrase)
"John saw what you did." (John = nominative subject; saw = accusative verb; what you did = accusative object clause)
"I believe that today is Tuesday." (I= nominative subject; believe = accusative verb; that today is Tuesday = accusative object clause)

Perhaps you wonder how accusative differs from transitive. Essentially, transitive applies only to the operation of verbs but accusative applies not only to that but also to the operation of prepositions. Thus, "I watch movies on weekends" is parsed as "I" = nominative subject, "watch" = accusative/transitive verb, "movies" = accusative/transitive object, "on" = preposition (which, by definition, is accusative), and "weekends" = prepositional/accusative object.

If I had an infinite amount of time and better inclination, I would substitute the lead paragraph of this article with the foregoing explanation. However, doing so would require a wholesale reconciliation of the article's remainder as well. Presently, I'm not enterprising enough to undertake such a vast project.

I hope some of this helps someone. Peace.

Kent Dominic 01:12, 26 March 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kent Dominic (talk • contribs)

Distribution

A discussion of the distribution (presumably 'geographical distribution') of nominative accusative languages is potentially interesting, but as written this section could be significantly improved. Some suggestions:

1. There is actually no discussion of 'distribution', just a list of languages. It would be nice to have an actual discussion of the distribution (maybe world-wise vs. the more restricted distribution of ergative-absolutive?) and an overt reference to the accompanying map.

2. It's unclear on what basis the list nom-acc was created or what it is meant to show -- it seems like a random list. It would be nice if the list were chosen on some principled basis and that basis explained. Maybe get rid of the list entirely it is not possible to make the relevance of the list clearer?

3. The location of the 'Distribution' section really breaks up the flow of the discussion of the grammatical characteristics of nom-acc systems for me. Maybe move this 'distribution' section to after the grammatical discussion?

Ldmanthroling (talk) 16:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add to this point. I feel that a good way to make this section more relevant and compact is to try to group the languages into language families, or at least, more explicitly detail their geographic spread than just having a small map on the side (I know the map is clickable, but it would be nice to see it at a glance while referring to the list at the same time). – Vanessa (talk) 00:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also would like to add to this point. I find language like "parts of North America" to be a bit vague. Given the size of North America and the linguistic diversity of the continent, some more precise language would be most helpful to someone interested in this topic. Naming continents creates more work for the reader I think, and then I start to think about which continent doesn't have the particular feature, and it begins to look like the feature of language really is widely distributed and not so rare. Naming which parts perhaps would be more illuminating. Kraecarpenter (talk) 08:09, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Syntactic accusativity

I thought this section was really good as far as it went. The example of conjunction reduction was very well done, especially in showing what we could expect to see were English an ergative-absolutive language. You mention several other syntactic processes that are affected by alignment system (subject-controlled subject deletion, object-controlled subject deletion, Raising). I think it would be great if you had examples of these that were as clear as your conjunction reduction example.

Mmjacobs (talk) 19:11, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the section on syntactic accusativity is quite good, but the page as a whole would benefit from a (brief) discussion of the difference between morphological and syntactic accusativity. As the page is organized, these two important ideas are just section headings, essentially presupposing that the reader knows the difference! Ldmanthroling (talk) 14:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

General comments

I am very impressed with the breadth of examples in this article, as well as the section at the end about relevant theory. I feel that this section could possibly be brought further to the front of the article, maybe after 'distribution', because it seems to deal with more overarching linguistic issues, i.e. why languages demonstrate this order, whereas details in the implementation of nom-acc should come later. I would also like to see a few more examples - maybe one for Differential Subject Marking, because I'm a little confused as to how this fits in with case marking and DOM as mentioned in its explanatory paragraph. – Vanessa (talk) 00:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like the intro of this article does not quite capture the content of this article in a particularly accessible way. Specifically, the discussion of the qualities of the argument alignment in the latter part of the intro relies quite a bit on technical language, with links to other articles, rather than making the point clear in its own right. Part of the task of Wikipedia is to explain topics in a way which is accessible to the layman, so I believe that an effort should be made to address the sentiment expressed by the top commenter on this discussion page, who we can assume does not have our background in linguistics. BerkeleyAaron (talk) 21:12, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it would be good to mention in the relevant theory section something about how the nominative-accusative system discredits Universal Grammar because of the greater likelihood of functional pressure; since we spent a fairly significant portion of the class discussing linguistic universals, and as nominative-accusative systems are perhaps so common as to be considered (incorrectly) universal, I think UG would certainly be a relevant, albeit discredited, theory to add. It may also be helpful to readers (some of whom may be unfamiliar with the proper terminology) for the roles of S, A, and O to be explicitly mentioned as subject/object for a transitive/intransitive verb. Hbolaria (talk) 06:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)Harkiran[reply]

I agree with Aaron here... This article immediately presents itself as quite dense and full of technical language that I don't think is completely necessary. While of course your precise use of technical language is admirable, it can take a while to parse (especially for someone like me... this is my second linguistics class). While Wikipedia does have the useful function of linking to other articles, I do not think that it would be redundant to take some more time in explaining the various concepts on this page rather than simply linking to them. On a different note, I really appreciated all the examples you used, especially for Case Marking and Differential Object Marking. One thing that I would really like to see on this page is some more tables though -- a lot of these examples (and in other sections too) share a similar structure in the way they are presented, and I think organizing these into a table or tables of sorts would be extremely helpful and really quite interesting to look at. The tables might also be a nice way to tie in various concepts from different sections, which could clear up some of the kinds of confusions that Vanessa was having.. In general, tables provide you a really nice way to contrast various sections of your discussion without having to rearrange everything or constantly jump back and forth from subject to subject. Benjpianist (talk) 07:43, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely agree with the above comments about adding to the intro section. However, I am also confused as to the roll of direct objects vs indirect objects. To be honest, I don't know that much about ergative-absolutive vs nominative-accusative to begin with, but from what I understand it deals only with direct objects. The main reason I bring this up is due to the French example of "Je(A) joue au foot(O) I-NOM play soccer-ACC ’I play soccer’" While in English "soccer" is a direct object, in French it is an indirect object (au = à + le). Like I said, I'm a little confused and maybe an explanation about direct objects vs indirect objects would be helpful. Gkneveu (talk) 08:01, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, it seems like you guys have a fair amount of content about the topic. However, I think that the breadth of the content might have led to less in depth explanations because I felt a bit confused after reading some sections. I could see connections to our class in the part about theory since it discussed functional pressures that related to one of our readings, but I'm not sure how much of the page related to a social aspect of linguistics that is the topic of our class. Like the others have said, I think that the introductory paragraph needs some editing. I had to reread the second sentence several times since there are some odd breaks with commas. Also, for the morphological accusativity section, I think that it could be beneficial to give a short explanation of what it is beyond listing the different types. I almost did not realize that DOM and DSM were subcategories of case marking until I looked at the Content outline (perhaps it would help to differentiate the headings?). Ahwu (talk) 10:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe most of my thoughts have been previously summarized. Mainly, that the information could be presented in a more reader friendly way, especially when explaining example languages. Perhaps moving the distribution section further towards the end after the concept has been elucidated might be a nice organizational addition. There is a lot of information here, a bit overwhelming but a very huge breadth around the topic. Alanadanielle (talk) 08:17, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nominative-accusative vs. ergative-absolutive

I think the distinction between these two language alignments was presented rather quickly, even though I feel it is a major aspect of understanding nominative-accusative language structure. I feel that the explanation of the differing codings systems was unclear and difficult to understand without very close reading. I think this section would be much stronger and more beneficial with examples that actually demonstrate the coding systems you refer to - such as morphological case marking that can represent shared/different alignments between S, V, and O. Skang03 (talk) 02:50, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree that these different alignments were presented rather quickly. I am intrigued by your discussion about split-ergativity. I don't understand how this would evolve or why it would be beneficial for a language to sometimes use nominative-accusative and sometimes use ergative-absolutive. I also would have liked to see more explanation for why these linguistic phenomena exist rather than just one paragraph at the end of the wiki page. I know there is a separate wiki page for split ergativity, but I think it's related enough to what you're trying to explain that it should have been talked about a little, especially to look at why different alignments evolved and in what context. Rebeccakoganlee (talk) 06:55, 28 September 2011 (UTC)rebeccakoganlee[reply]

References

A minor point: The references are not all in the same bibliographic style. It would be good to render them uniform. 24.5.243.88 (talk) 13:58, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

marking of nominative and/or accusative

The discussion of differential object marking makes me think of a perhaps more common typological topic that is not mentioned on this page, namely which of the two relations gets marked in morphological case systems. Its not unusual for only one of the relations to be overtly marked, while the other is unmarked. In Quechuan languages, for example, one finds that the accusative is marked with the suffix -ta, while the nominative is unmarked. This is the most common pattern, but definitely not the only one. You can find a nice introductory discussion of this issue at the World Atlas of Language Structures (http://wals.info/), which is where, incidentally, the pretty map on this page is originally from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ldmanthroling (talk • contribs) 14:06, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relevant theory

The 'conception of the subject' section is very hard to understand. What does 'continuity' mean here. Ldmanthroling (talk) 14:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The 'functional pressure' section mentions functional explanations for the frequent emergence of nominative-accusative systems, but doesn't actually provide those explanations. It would be helpful to flesh this out so that a reader could actually understand how a nominative-accusative system balances the satisfaction of communicative functional pressures with principles of structural economy. A reference to Evans and Levinson (2009) may also not go astray here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ldmanthroling (talk • contribs) 14:12, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Marking vs. word order

The article on Case in the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (Keith Brown, 2nd edition, 2002, Elsevier) says that, "Case is essentially a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads," and that traditionally the term refers to inflectional marking. By contrast, languages that use word order rather than marking to identify the relations of words do not properly speaking have case systems. It says that this is true of English, but that, "English has a vestigial two-way case system marked on most personal pronouns," but not on you or it. This contradicts two points made in this article: that word order is a way of distinguishing nominative and accusative case, and that English is a nominative-accusative language. That latter claim (only recently added to this article) is also contradicted by the contention that I've seen in other WP articles and elsewhere, that pronouns in English instead have subjective and objective cases, rather than nominative and accusative. I'm inclined to edit this article accordingly, citing my source, but I figured I'd ask about this first, so see what other people think. Jbening (talk) 01:33, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Jbening: In linguistic typology, "nominative–accusative" alignment is not restricted to languages with morphological case marking. Yes, the terms "nominative" and "accusative" have been adopted from grammatical decriptions of languages that have overt case marking on nouns, but the concept of "nominative–accusative" alignment reaches much farther than that. As you can see in the much too short sections "2.2 Word order" and "2.2 Verb agreement", it can be also be applied to languages like Indonesian and Amharic, which completely lack overt case marking.

With the excpetion of pronouns, English actually behaves like Indonesian (or Chinese and many other languages all around the globe) in encoding grammatical relations between "core arguments" (= subject + object) and the verb solely by word order. The patterns of English word order are "nominative–accusative", since the subject of intransitive verbs (= S) and the subject of transitive verbs (= A) appear in the same position in basic clauses, viz. preceding the verb. In the cat hunted the mouse, the cat—which precedes the verb—can only refer to the transitive subject (A), just as the single argument of an intransitive verb has to appear in the same position (the cat ran). While this may appear trivial, it is actually not, since there are natural languages which align S, A, and O (= object) differently. E.g. some languages agree with English in having subject-verb-object order in transitive clauses, but verb-subject in intransitive clauses, i.e. the intransitive subject aligns with the transitive object; such languages have "ergative–absolutive" alignment.

Overall, the article is not in an ideal shape. Apart from off-topic material, it is too technical, as a consequence of which some readers will not grasp what it is actually about, and project their own fantasies about what it could be about into it (as my interlocutor at the bottom).

So I fully agree with your remark below that since this is English WP and English happens to have "nominative–accusative alignment", this topic should be first illustrated with good and well-sourced examples from the language every reader is familiar with. And there are good sources about English being "nominative–accusative", which I will add later. And of course, the evolution of nominative–accusative alignment in English from case-marking to word order can be mentioned here as well. But since this is not the WP of English, but a universal encyclopedia, the in-depth discussion should be IMO rather cross-language, and not too detailed about every aspect of nominative–accusative alignment in English. Many non-expert readers are fascinated with the diversity of the languages of the world even when they are not interested in theoretical linguistics, so we should aim to make this topic accessible to the interested and benevolent reader, with a broad range of examples. –Austronesier (talk) 07:57, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Section: "Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment"

This is section was inserted here in 2011 by a drive-by editor, and provides mildly interesting trivia about T-V distinctions, and hypercorrect use of nominative English pronouns in oblique position. Nice, but not really related to the topic of nominative–accusative alignment. We have a complete article T–V distinction and a section Hypercorrection#Personal pronouns, so I don't think that anybody will miss this section. I will delete it. –Austronesier (talk) 15:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Kent Dominic: Ok, you want to keep the section "to maintain the record of relevant morphological history". But what is its relation to nominative–accusative alignment? This page is not about the morphological history of English 2nd person pronouns, nor about the accomplished T→V shift in English. The same question holds for the second subsection. –Austronesier (talk) 17:09, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier: The relevance I see regards how the terms, nominative and accusative correspond to Middle English second person pronouns as charted and explained in the article despite some picky inaccuracies I'm too lazy to emend. Although our modern-day use of the terms mostly bear linguistic relevance as applied on an interlingual basis, they still maintain relevance in order to properly construe how they formerly applied to our bygone case system. Yet, despite the overall collapse of the nominative case system in modern-day English, the "Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment" section of the article really does provide context concerning how extant nominative-accusative languages correspond (to some extent) to archaic usages that persist in our hymns, poems, plays, etc. I don't rightly know how "nominative" or "accusative" translates into various other languages, but those terms seem to help interested ESL students better understand the thee(s) and thy(s) and thou(s) and thine(s) they come across from Chaucer or Shakespeare or church or wherever. Granted, the majority of native English speakers couldn't care less about how to categorize Middle English vocab but, as far as the article goes, I think it's better to have the reference there than to need it and not have it handy. --Kent Dominic 17:58, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@Kent Dominic: This page is not about the . Nor is it primarily about nominal inflection. It is about nominative–accusative alignment, as contrasting with ergative–absolute, tripartite and other (including mixed) forms of alignment. The material may be notable and illustrative, but not in the context of this article. It's quite |out of place here. English still is nominative-accusative in spite of its lack of overt case marking. Word order, clause combining etc. all display this feature. The relevance you see only works if you conflate alignment with inflectional case marking, and that clearly contradicts the common typological definition of "nominative–accusative". Chinese is a nominative–accusative language and realizes this per word order, Swahili is nominative–accusative in its system of person-gender marking verb affixes, and these extant nominative-accusative languages provide little analogy to archaic usages that persist in English hymns, poems, plays, etc. –Austronesier (talk) 18:47, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Austronesier: This page is not about the nominal inflection of English, and its eventual collapse with residual retention in the pronoun system.

Kent Dominic: Cheers, but, considering my restoration of the content you had deleted, the article indeed relates to all three of the above.

Austronesier: It is about nominative–accusative alignment, as contrasting with ergative–absolute.

Kent Dominic: Well, the article's heading is "Nominative–accusative language." It's not until the second paragraph that nominative–accusative alignment is mentioned. I'm not saying that to be querulous; I'm just saying.

Austronesier: The material may be notable and illustrative ...

Kent Dominic: "May be ..."? I'd say that it is ... !

Austronesier: ... but not in the context of this article.

Kent Dominic: Just to be clear, I'm neither vouching for the accuracy of the restored verbiage nor am I claiming that it rightfully belongs in an article limited to nominative–accusative alignment. I'd have no qualms about a nominative–accusative alignment article that had an internal reference linking to a nominal inflection of English and its eventual collapse with residual retention in the pronoun system page.

Austronesier: English still is nominative-accusative in spite of its lack of overt case marking. Word order, clause combining etc. all display this feature.

Kent Dominic: So you say, so says the article, and I agree fully despite how 99.99% of the people surveyed have no idea of what we're talking about.

Austronesier: The material may be notable and illustrative, but not in the context of this article. It's quite out of place here.

Kent Dominic: If by "here" you mean "an article relating to Nominative–accusative language," I think it's absolutely contextually relevant. If "here" is intended to mean "an article solely relating to Nominative–accusative alignment," then I'd agree that it's out of place. I haven't checked the entire corpus of Wikipedia articles concerning where else verbiage tantamount to the deleted/restored verbiage might be lurking, but it's definitely not in the Nominative case article. My singular stance is that it needs to be somewhere in Wikipedia. (Perhaps your beef is with @Pablo-flores:, who created this article in 2004 as a derivation of the morphosyntactic alignment page - none of which concerned me until your most recent post in this Talk Page section. If he had instead created an article titled as Nominative–accusative alignment, that might have prompted the above-mentioned drive-by editor to post his arcane-yet-interesting trivia onto the Nominative case page rather than on the Nominative–accusative alignment page.)

Austronesier: The relevance you see only works if you conflate alignment with inflectional case marking, and that clearly contradicts the common typological definition of "nominative–accusative".

Kent Dominic: I hope by now you can see that I'm not conflating topics. (See above.) I.e., nominative-accusative is not yet defined here at Wikipedia, but its typology might include branches relating to -

The argument you're presenting for deleting the offending verbiage from the current Nominative-accusative language article was, IMHO, better presented in 2011 in the hypothetical context of a response to the drive-by editor's posting of his/her verbiage in the erstwhile morphosyntactic alignment page (or in an appropriately titled Nominative–accusative alignment page).

Austronesier: Chinese is a nominative–accusative language and realizes this per word order, Swahili is nominative–accusative in its system of person-gender marking verb affixes.

Kent Dominic: Your point being ... ?

Austronesier: These extant nominative-accusative languages provide little analogy to archaic usages that persist in English hymns, poems, plays, etc.

Kent Dominic: I readily agree, especially with the salient characterization, "little." I'll go one step further: I suspect no one besides inveterate linguistics weenies care to know, e.g. that "thee" stems from Old English (þē) in its dative sense, morphed into Middle English (þu) in its accusative sense, and into "you" in a modern-day sense that 99.99% of native English speakers would identify as having an objective or subjective case, as identified in the majority of reputable English-English dictionaries. However, Chinese and Swahili (et al) ESL students who look up "thee" in an English-foreign language dictionary are likely to encounter terms that equate to dative and accusative, along with corresponding definitions for those terms. If they happen to reference a nominative-accusative entry at Wikipedia as part of their inquiry, they'll be stuck if the verbiage you deleted is nowhere to be found.

Long and short, I'll credit your initiative if you ultimately decide to re-title this article as Nominative–accusative alignment and move the offending verbiage onto a newly-created Nominative-accusative sociolinguists page. I'd attempt it myself but I'm hardly very Wikitech-smart. Sad to say I'd probably be one of only two dozen non-PhD users worldwide who'd come here hunting for discourse on "nominal inflection of English and its eventual collapse with residual retention in the pronoun system." It'd be a shame if the next weenie in search of such a discourse isn't as lucky as I was because the verbiage had been deleted rather than moved. --Kent Dominic 02:44, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

@Kent Dominic: Long and short, I'll credit your initiative if you ultimately decide to re-title this article as Nominative–accusative alignment...

Good idea, I'll propose this to the other inveterate linguistics weenies out here.

...and move the offending verbiage onto a newly-created Nominative-accusative sociolinguists page.

"Not bloody likely". Maybe somewhere else into an existing page, but hardly . Stay safe and healthy! –Austronesier (talk) 07:55, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier: Cheers. Back atcha re. safety & health. Someday, in the afterlife following your recent slaying due to the "'married' is an adjective" remark, please let me know how to apply colors besides whatever color this is.

Kent Dominic, I find it baffling that you refuse to see the obvious here. The article is about a certain syntactic pattern – how certain arguments would pattern together with respect to case marking, agreement morphology, or various syntactic processes. The section you've been restoring, on the other hand – ignoring the long speculative detour about the history of English personal pronouns – is essentially about how in a certain English construction it's acceptable to use both I and me. The only thing these two topics have in common is that you would likely use words like nominative and accusative in one way or another when describing them. – Uanfala (talk) 15:23, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier: Please un-baffle yourself and disabuse yourself of the presumption about what I refuse to see, which I suspect you'll understand if you've heeded the foregoing discussion. In summary, the article was inappropriately titled Nominative–accusative language from its precursory morphosyntactic alignment page. Under the former title, or under an appropriately titled Nominative–accusative alignment page (now under consideration), you and @Austronesier: are right that the verbiage in question doesn't belong. However, until the current article is re-titled, your quarrel relates to @Pablo-flores: (i.e. for the current title from 2004) but not with @Jdhlee89: (i.e. for adding the verbiage in 2011), and certainly not with me now. If you're Wiki-savvy enough to move the verbiage to a Nominative-accusative sociolinguists page, why don't you apply your energy and smarts to pursuing that rather than rail against material that is unfortunately included in a mistitled article? In fact, I'm mostly uninterested in Nominative–accusative alignment but I'm keenly interested in Nominative-accusative sociolinguists as a facet of Nominative-accusative language - both of which rightfully belong on the non-existent "Nominative-accusative" page, which redirects to the "Nominative-accusative language" page. Kent Dominic 02:37, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Kent Dominic: You have inserted the material here[1], and you have repeatedly re-added it, so we most certainly only have to deal with you and no one else. The current title was aptly named Nominative–accusative language in the early 2000s, because it was common usage then to call languages with Nominative–accusative alignment Nominative–accusative languages, for the simple reason because the term "alignment" was already coined, but not yet in common use at that time; Nominative–accusative case system or Nominative–accusative system are examples found in the relevant literature of the 1990s. So even then, the topic was a specific alignment or case-marking type, and not everything you always wanted to know about nominative and accusative case, but were afraid to ask. Consequently, your material is out of place here. Btw, Nominative-accusative sociolinguistics is a non-existent topic[2], why should anyone create an article about it. Here are a few sources that might help you to figure out what "nominative–accusative" is about:

Comrie, Bernard (1989). Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Dixon, R.M.W. (1994). Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Comrie, Bernard, Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases, WALS Online.
Siewierska, Anna, Alignment of Verbal Person Marking WALS Online.

–Austronesier (talk) 07:30, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a biologist, not a linguist, but to me the section that is in dispute does seem kind of out of place in the context of the article. If I were attending a lecture on nominative-accusative languages and the instructor started talking about the material in that section, I might find it entertaining, but I think I'd also consider it a largely unproductive digression. The historical episode bears only on the evolution of two different N-A forms in English, not on an evolution toward or away from N-A case marking in English. I can appreciate a desire not to lose useful information, but it does appear that those subjects are treated of better elsewhere in WP.

To me, a more relevant discussion to add to the article (given that it's in the English language WP) is the evolution of English away from case marking (or morphological case marking, if you prefer), and the debate as to whether English should still be described as a nominative-accusative language, and the arguments that have been advanced for English as instead having a subjective-objective grammar. That would to me be more helpful than simply asserting dogmatically (as the article currently does) that English is a nominative-accusative language (without citing sources there and in SO MANY other places in this article), when I don't think that's universally agreed upon in the field.

Speaking of that, and while you folks are here and so enthusiastically engaged, could I please get responses to my query from just over a year ago, in the talk section above this one? Thanks in advance. Jbening (talk) 23:05, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jbening: I agree that the section is only tangentially related in the context of the article. My argument all along has been (1) its apparent relevance given the overly-inclusive title, which ought to be changed, IMHO, and (2) its merit for inclusion somewhere in Wikipedia rather than its arbitrary deletion, since there's no existing page where it properly fits.

@Austronesier:

Austronesier: You have inserted the material here[https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?

Kent Dominic: I have not "inserted the material there [3]." I restored it by undoing your deletion. @Pablo-flores: inserted it in 2011.

Austronesier: You have repeatedly re-added it.

Kent Dominic: "Re-added," true. I trusted that you were able to use a more precise manner of semantics when you put your mind to it, and my faith has been rewarded.

Austronesier: The current title was aptly named Nominative–accusative language in the early 2000s, because it was common usage then to call languages with Nominative–accusative alignment Nominative–accusative languages, for the simple reason because the term "alignment" was already coined,.

Kent Dominic: How many times do you wish to hear yourself reiterate and re-chronicle these points before you realize the relevance of the current title? Your assertion that it was "aptly" named is (a) conclusory and (b) the sole basis of my argument that the "Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment" section rightfully belongs in an article so titled (but not in a Nominative-accusative alignment article.

Austronesier: So even then, the topic was a specific alignment or case-marking type.

Kent Dominic: Please use your "Find on page" function to determine how many times you've reiterated that very point and how many times I've indicated that it's been duly noted and agreed.

Austronesier: Consequently, your material is out of place here.

Kent Dominic: Dude, please use your expert chronicling skills, dust the rust from your semantics skills, and put on your finest reading lenses to enable fully and unequivocally acquainting yourself with the fact that my name ain't Pablo-Flores and it my material.

Austronesier: Btw, Nominative-accusative sociolinguistics is a non-existent topic[4], why should anyone create an article about it. (sic)

Kent Dominic: My dear Mr. or Ms. Austronesier, I deeply apologize to anyone who is unable, unwilling, or disinclined to intuit or otherwise recognize satire that I place beyond the pale of one's grasp. If only I could read between the lines in your behalf.

Austronesier: Here are a few sources that might help you to figure out what "nominative–accusative" is about: (Blah, blah, and double-blah...).

Kent Dominic: Thank you for the sources, which I'm quite sure would benefit someone who had an abiding need or interest regarding Nominative-accusative alignment in contrast to one who is interested in the sociolinguistic factors relating to the demise of the predominant use of the terms "nominative" and "accusative" (as applied to the English language) due to the coincidental Collapse of English second-person pronouns illustrated in the handy chart inserted by Pablo-Flores, whose ability to see the arcane-yet-slightly-relevant nexus to Nominative-accusative alignment seems to greatly exceed your ability, willingness, or intellect to humbly admit. --Kent Dominic 00:58, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

@Kent Dominic: Since you have a self-proclaimed disinterest in the topic of the article which is defined in the first line ("Nominative–accusative languages, or nominative languages have a form of morphosyntactic alignment...") and prefer to remain in wilfull ignorance about it, you apparently lack judgement about what can be included here or not. I will delete again the section which was written by Jdhlee89 in 2011, deleted by me and Uanfala because most editors and readers with a genuine interest in the topic will consider it off-topic, and persistently inserted by you for reasons which you have expounded in your inimitable rhetoric. If you are not sure where to properly place it, don't store it here; copy it to your sandbox until your superior intuition will guide you to the apt page. –Austronesier (talk) 06:48, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier:

You started off with the petitio principii that the Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment section "is not really related to the topic of nominative–accusative alignment despite how you initially stipulated that it "provides mildly interesting trivia about T-V distinctions, and hypercorrect use of nominative English pronouns in oblique position."
Next you articulated an Etymological fallacy upon conflating the semantics regarding (a) Nominative-accusative language (i.e. the article's title), whose typology includes Nominative case, Accusative case, and a raft of subtopics that vary by taxonomy, (b) Nominative-accusative alignment, which should have been the article's title seeing as that's primarily what the article entails, and (c) Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment, which - despite any argument to the contrary - is a subtopic of Nominative–accusative language albeit not a subtopic of Nominative–accusative alignment
The assertion that "I don't think that anybody will miss this (Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment) section" represents a hasty generalization as evidenced by the fact that I am one who immediately rued its deletion. NOTE: As I've stated umpteen times, I would not have opposed moving it to a more appropriate place.
The assertions that the page "is about nominative–accusative alignment" and "the article is about a certain syntactic pattern" and "This page is not about the nominal inflection of English" (et al) entail (a) Ignoratio elenchi since Pablo-Flores properly included Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment under the unfortunately titled Nominative–accusative language article that had been MOSTLY about nominative–accusative alignment, and (b) Argumentum ad nauseam.
Comments like, "I find it baffling that you..." are uproariously ad hominem; Comments such as "Here are a few sources that might help you ..." have the hilarious smell of a Courtier's reply. I don't pity the fool who offers such arguments; I appreciate each opportunity to LOL.
"Since you have a self-proclaimed disinterest in the topic of the article" is not only ad hominem, it's also a red herring, and a nefarious one at that. If you'd like to quote me, dear Mr. or Ms. Austronesier, please do so accurately and in proper context, i.e. "I really don't give an at's rass (to coin a new spoonerism) about "nominative-accusative" EXCEPT as a last-ditch means to explain (1) Old English and Middle English vocabulary for the benefit of people who are more familiar with nominative and accusative versus subjective case and objective case." (EMPHASIS added.)
"The article ... is defined in the first line ('Nominative–accusative languages, or nominative languages have a form of morphosyntactic alignment...)" entails the fallacy of equivocation and the Definist fallacy. While I concede that "Nominative–accusative languages, or nominative languages have a form of morphosyntactic alignment...") is obviously true, the statement is (a) a characterization that generally applies to numerous types of Morphosyntactic alignment; it's NOT a lexical definition that applies uniquely to nominative-accusative languages. I'll refrain from mentioning that my limited interest in Nominative-accusative alignment (i.e. as a subtopic within the subject of Nominative-accusative language) precluded me from offering a proper definition within the context of THIS article since, in my view, the entire first paragraph of this article is non-relevant to the thrust of Nominative-accusative alignment topic that bears the unfortunate Nominative-accusative language title.

So, until this article's title is changed (and the offending first paragraph is deleted along with the Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment section), please stop positing any more fallacious reasoning and refrain from any tendency toward hubris despite how its expression helps me to LMAO when I see an alert with your name attached. NOTE: Repeatedly deleting the offending material, in light of these arguments, merely smacks of the argument from repetition as well as proof by assertion fallacies. Peace. --Kent Dominic 10:42, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Kent Dominic, instead of endless textwalls, ad hominem attacks, and attributing edits and statements to the wrong editors: what about providing WP:reliable sources that define "Nominative–accusative language" the way you do? I have provided some above that support Uanfala's and my understanding of what "Nominative–accusative language" is about. Btw, just wondering: why you do find the material "offending"? It is just off-topic here. –Austronesier (talk) 11:13, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier: I disagree that any of my arguments have been ad hominem, which isn't my style to attack anyone's credentials or motives. I've been careful to use hypothetical language to couch observations of your intellect. I'm relentless at satire; if it comes off as sarcasm I'm sorry if you feel hurt by it.

Re. a better definition for Nominative-accusative language: I haven't yet seen any published definition that satisfies me. Off the top of my head, I'd define it as "a language that entails a Morphosyntactic alignment primarily marked by a nominative case and an accusative case." That's a lexicographical take on the linguistic characterization I offered last year in the "what is this on about?" section of this talk page. (See above.)

As for the "offending language," The Nominative-accusative sociolinguistics section language is "offending[5]" (i.e. "causing difficulty, discomfort, or injury") because (a) it troubles you on the Nominative-accusative language page, and (b) it troubles me for being prematurely deleted from an unfortunately titled page that is mismatched with an article that is mostly about Nominative-accusative alignment. Perhaps the issue could be resolved by properly defining Nominative-accusative language in general terms (i.e. as a main article) and assigning separate subsections for Nominative-accusative alignment and for Nominative-accusative sociolinguistics .

Now, don't take this as being ad hominem relative to the article; it's just my suggestion based on what I consider to be a lack lexical cogency on your part: you might be well-served to take a step back in order to objectively consider the various taxons at play here. Then I think you'll agree that linguistic concepts are pretty straightforward; however, taxonomically indicating and lexicographically defining them in contextually accurate ways is the missing ingredient. We agree the Nominative-accusative sociolinguistics section doesn't belong under the Nominative-accusative alignment rubric; it absolutely belongs under the Nominative-accusative language rubric.

Accordingly, I'm going to revert your deletion (again) for the last time today. I'll wait until tomorrow to see what happens next. Far be it from me to castigate you or anyone else who might feel possessed to delete it again. I'm not insisting who's right or wrong; I'm simply saying that I think I've laid out persuasive arguments regarding the taxonomical issues here. By contrast, your arguments sound to me like a broken record that lacks lexically reasonable resonance despite the historicity you're clinging to. --Kent Dominic 12:41, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Kent Dominic, you're completely missing the point of this article. It's not about all things that can be said about the nominative and the accusative case, it's about a grammatical pattern that that doesn't even entail case marking in all languages. If your own understanding of this topic is different from that in existing published sources, then Wikipedia is definitely not the place for you to be advancing that. – Uanfala (talk) 12:57, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier: Pat yourself on the back concerning your clairvoyance if you're so inclined, but I caution against relying on it. After your self-congratulations, decide how long you want to sing to the choir about what Nominative-accusative alignment entails. My sole issue regards how the article, as titled, mischaracterizes the article, as expounded. It really is that simple.

P.S. I only just now read your comments here from –Austronesier (talk) 07:57, 7 May 2020 (UTC). Well said, and I couldn't agree more. Nonetheless, my interest in this discussion remains limited to the lexical facets of nominative and accusative as taxons that can be analogized somewhat to the use of transitive and adpositional phrase taxons. An article titled Nominative-accusative language invites that discussion; an article appropriately titled Nominative-accusative alignment would not. Peace. --Kent Dominic 13:26, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Kent Dominic: No WP:reliable source, then? –Austronesier (talk) 16:39, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Admin note: I have blocked the page for two days to stop the edit warring. You both know better. If you cannot agree, consider getting a third opinion, or asking for help at an appropriate WikiProject. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:48, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looking through the discussion, there seems to be rough consensus for removal. Kent is the only person suggesting it remain, while three editors suggest it is out of place and should be removed. Personally, I also think it's out of place and would fit better at our article on TV distinction if it is to remain anywhere. I think it's becoming clear that readdition of the material is against consensus. — Wug·a·po·des 18:57, 8 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Kent Dominic: In reply to your comment on User:Wugapodes's talk page: Can you provide a WP:reliable source that defines the topic "Nominative-accusative language" "archetypally" the way you propose, thus in a different way from e.g. Comrie (1989) and Dixon (1994)? The page move proposal is about the WP:COMMONNAME of a well-defined topic ("Nominative-accusative language" was apt in 2004, "Nominative-accusative language" is better in 2020, but both mean the same), not about the redefinition of the topic range of the article. Provided that is not part of the consensus.

If you find reliable sources that support your understanding of the topic "Nominative-accusative language" using exactly this term (in more than just a casual or ad hoc manner), the deletable material can be reinserted with special reference to the sources N.N.₁ (19xx), N.N.₂ (20xx) etc. which also may serve as base for a new article "Nominative-accusative language" after the execution of the page move. @Wugapodes: Or am I mistaken about the "Wikiprotocol" here? –Austronesier (talk) 14:12, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Fair line of inquiry, but I can't address the question as phrased. Comrie never defined the term, "Nominative-accusative language." Instead, he outlined the empirical alignment types evident in languages whose predominant syntax entails nominative-accusative case markings. So too with Dixon (1979, 1994): he never defines "Nominative-accusative language" but merely uses the term as a shorthand for certain syntactic patterns corresponding to nominative/accusative case markings (as distinct from "Ergative-absolutive language;" also not defined). Although you describe Nominative-accusative language as being "a well-defined topic," I think you're right from a linguistics standpoint. From a lexicographical POV, however, the term, "Nominative-accusative language," has never been intensionally defined in scholarly terms that I've yet to find.

Indeed, last year, when I tried to help @Johnsoniensis: here, I searched for published definitions relating to the term, "Nominative-accusative language," seeing as this article doesn't have a bona fide intensional definition. Here's some plain English stuff that I slogged last year:

"A nominative-accusative language treats subjects of transitive and intransitive sentences alike (with the nominative case), while setting them apart from the objects of transitive sentences (in the accusative). Tongan as an ergative-absolutive language, on the other hand, treats subjects of intransitive sentences and objects of transitive sentences alike (with the absolute case), while subjects of transitive sentences are set apart by the ergative case (Chung, 1978;Duranti, 1994;Bender and Beller, 2003). Reserchgate.net
"An ergative language maintains a syntactic or morphological equivalence (such as the same word order or grammatical case) for the object of a transitive verb and the single core argument of an intransitive verb, while treating the agent of a transitive verb differently. This contrasts with nominative–accusative languages such as English or many other european languages, where the single argument of an intransitive verb and the agent of a transitive verb (both called the subject) are treated alike and kept distinct from the object of a transitive verb.memrise.com
"A nominative-accusative language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of transitive verbs distinguishing them from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs. "academickids.com

Among those three, only the third is a an intensional definition. The first two are merely extenstional definitions but infinitely better than the gibberish currently in the Nominative-accusative language article, which is so nebulously worded that it could apply to almost any form of syntactic alignment. (The third paragraph regarding "transitive verb..." is completely irrelevant but I would argue just as strenuously against deleting it under the circumstances.)

My gloss of internet discussions at Quora and Stack Exchange similarly shows the use of the "Nominative-accusative language" as shorthand for the relevant syntactic alignments without a prima facie definition of the term. Thus, for the uninitiated discussion participants, mere invocations of the term tended to sow confusion.

Personally, I don't consider the Nominative-accusative alignment topic to be all that complex. But if this Wikipedia article were my only resource on the subject I'd never be able to make heads or tails of it. And I'm not claiming that my suggested definitions are a panacea nor can I assert that they bear an on-the-nose semblance to a WP:reliable source. Yet, my suggestions are not really original. If there's no room here for empirically valid restatements of those reliable sources, this article will continue to do a disserve to the @Johnsoniensis:s of the world who don't know "nominative" from "nomination" or "accusative" from "accusation." I mean, really: An article on nominative-accusative alignment that's titled nominative-accusative language but doesn't even describe how nominative and accusative are entailed? Please. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 18:26, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Kent Dominic: I agree that both Comrie and Dixon never define "nominative-accusative language". Dixon outlines what a "nominative-accusative grammatical system" or "nominative-accusative case system" is, and later on denotes languages with such a system "nominative-accusative languges" etc. The same holds for Comrie. If we dig deep enough, we rather find rather casual statements in the literature that come close to a definition, e.g.

"Japanese is classified as a nominative-accusative language, where the subject of a transitive verb is treated in the same case-marking terms as the subject of an intransitive verb, but differently from the direct object of a transitive verb" (Hideki Kishimoto (2004), "Transitivity of ergative case-marking predicates in Japanese", Studies in Language) [here the "definition" appears embedded in a predication]
"Accusative languages, on the other hand, have the property that the subject of a sentence, whether transitive or intransitive, is in the nominative case, while the object of a transitive sentence is specially marked for objective case." (Ken Hale (1970), "The Passive and Ergative in Language Change: the Australian Case", Pacific Linguisitcs C-13) [note how Hale already dissociates the typological characterstic "accusative" from the overt case form which he calls "objective"]

Hale uses "accusative language" instead of "nominative-accusative language"; the latter term more and more comes into use in the 80s. And, agreed, most scholars employ the term (presumably) exactly knowing what it refers to, and (apparently) confident enough to expect their peers to know what is means, even though the term has never been defined in a lexicographically satisfying manner.

So I change my previous wording to shape a more humble request: can you provide a WP:reliable source that employs the term "Nominative-accusative language" "archetypally" the way you propose, thus in a different way from e.g. Comrie (1989) and Dixon (1994), in order to define the topic range of the page "Nominative-accusative language"? After all, WP is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary.

As for your remaining comments about the article: the fact that it fails to describe how nominative and accusative are entailed is not its greatest weakness; it fails to give the non-expert reader a picture of what the topic is about, and it is badly undersourced (which actually renders many parts of it deletable even if they are not off-topic). –Austronesier (talk) 20:16, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PS: If you type {{tq|this is green}}, it yields this is green. Cheers! –Austronesier (talk) 20:17, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier: et al: See Part 2 below. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 05:40, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sociolinguistics and nominative–accusative alignment, Part 2

@Kent Dominic: I agree that both Comrie and Dixon never define "nominative-accusative language". Dixon outlines what a "nominative-accusative grammatical system" or "nominative-accusative case system" is, and later on denotes languages with such a system "nominative-accusative languges" etc. The same holds for Comrie. If we dig deep enough, we rather find rather casual statements in the literature that come close to a definition, e.g.

"Japanese is classified as a nominative-accusative language, where the subject of a transitive verb is treated in the same case-marking terms as the subject of an intransitive verb, but differently from the direct object of a transitive verb" (Hideki Kishimoto (2004), "Transitivity of ergative case-marking predicates in Japanese", Studies in Language) [here the "definition" appears embedded in a predication]
"Accusative languages, on the other hand, have the property that the subject of a sentence, whether transitive or intransitive, is in the nominative case, while the object of a transitive sentence is specially marked for objective case." (Ken Hale (1970), "The Passive and Ergative in Language Change: the Australian Case", Pacific Linguisitcs C-13) [note how Hale already dissociates the typological characterstic "accusative" from the overt case form which he calls "objective"]

Hale uses "accusative language" instead of "nominative-accusative language"; the latter term more and more comes into use in the 80s. And, agreed, most scholars employ the term (presumably) exactly knowing what it refers to, and (apparently) confident enough to expect their peers to know what is means, even though the term has never been defined in a lexicographically satisfying manner.

So I change my previous wording to shape a more humble request: can you provide a WP:reliable source that employs the term "Nominative-accusative language" "archetypally" the way you propose, thus in a different way from e.g. Comrie (1989) and Dixon (1994), in order to define the topic range of the page "Nominative-accusative language"? After all, WP is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary.

As for your remaining comments about the article: the fact that it fails to describe how nominative and accusative are entailed is not its greatest weakness; it fails to give the non-expert reader a picture of what the topic is about, and it is badly undersourced (which actually renders many parts of it deletable even if they are not off-topic). –Austronesier (talk) 20:16, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PS: If you type {{tq|this is green}}, it yields this is green. Cheers! –Austronesier (talk) 20:17, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get me wrong: I only used "archetypally" in reference to the language aspect in the "Nominative-accusative language" phrase. Thus, "morphosyntactic alignment" is a subtopic of syntax in the set of language. Just common sense. The point is moot, however, because the article's title now more accurately reflects the article's content.

(NOTE: Please, please, pretty please avoid deleting the Sociolinguistics section quite yet. It obviously doesn't belong in this newly-titled Nominative-accusative alignment article, but allow me some time to work out how to include it in a new Nominative-accusative language article. Deal?)

Given this article's title change, the lead paragraph is discombobulated. Here's what I propose:

Nominative–accusative alignment is a form of morphosyntactic alignment in language structures marked by a pattern in which a subject functions as the syntactic head of a sentence or clause and is followed by a transitive or intransitive verb as an argument of that subject. English is marked by nominative-accusative alignment.

Simple. Accurate. It's not a kitchen sink approach but it suffices as a lead paragraph for users who want to gloss the meaning. It's also off the top of my head as it's not part of the lexicon in my yet unpublished glossary of grammatical terms, so I'm certain it needs proper tweaking, but I'd say its infinitely better than the gunk that's been there, which I previously described as being "gibberish." Correction: it's not gibberish; it's vacuously inane verbiage. It's like, "red has a hue in which lower intensity and saturation of color are distinguished from higher intensity and saturation of color by order of appearance in the color wavelength spectrum." R-i-i-i-ght.--Kent Dominic·(talk) 05:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Kent Dominic:

The point is not moot if you intend to re-occupy "Nominative–accusative language"; WP:reliable sources are pretty much needed everywhere in WP, not just in this article.
If it is just for retrievability, every edit and thus every chunk of text ever added to WP is historized. So you could retreive the section from the page history even after deletion.
Simple. And not quite accurate, or in other words: wro-o-o-ng. Many languages have nominative-accusative alignment, but are verb-initial (e.g. Welsh). Many languages have visible nominative-accusative alignment in their verb agreement even without an overt subject (Latin: vēnit vs. pānem ēdit). Positing the verb as an argument of the subject will also not be very helpful—"various linguistic theories" do the opposite.

–Austronesier (talk) 08:06, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, yeah - but not "wrong" wrong, just wrongishly incomplete. I said it was off the top of my head, and I was thinking only about English at the time. I'd planned to fix the proposal but I'm too late, given your observation. So, what's your best edit for that first draft? Personally, I think it's best to limit the opening paragraph to English language applicability. Otherwise we'll end up with a hugely long sentence with all the caveats. Don't believe me?Try this exercise: Do a Google translate from English to Korean on these sentences and then do a reverse translation --

He became rich
He became ill
He got sick
He was sickened
Sickness befell him
The building collapsed
The building burned down
The building was burned down
The train derailed
The train dove off the tracks
The train was driven off the tracks
The conductor drove the train off the tracks

It's not a matter of hit-or-miss translation. It's a matter of Hale (1979), Comrie (1989), Dixon (1994) inter alia having an aggregate body of work that doesn't fully account for a language (e.g. Hangul) that is somewhat nominative-accusative depending on the verb. Don't ask me why some Korean verbs can be conjugated only in a nominative case (Koreans translate it as "active verb" case) while other verbs are only conjugated in the ergative case (called "passive verb" case). More perplexing is how the Korean language allows some OV ergative combinations (e.g., "The game was delayed") but not others (e.g. "The flight was delayed" is translatable only as "Delayed flight happened).

The Hales, Comries, and Dixons of the world did yeoman's work. I'm just saying their work only goes so far. So, using their work (or anything similar) as a starting point regarding WP:reliable sources is going to get you into a linguistic quagmire in short order. In jurisprudence we apply the Plain meaning rule absent precedent for statutory interpretation. Combining that principle with internal logic establishes its own authority sua sponte in lieu of on-the-nose sources, IMHO.

So, now you can more clearly see why I never attempted to fix this article last year. At first I thought the article could help me to explain (to my Korean ESL students) why "A delayed flight was happened" is grammatically wrong or why "My guests are arrived" is technically correct from a grammar POV but so awkward from a usage standpoint that it immediately exposes the shortcoming of attempted transliterations. But, the more I read of the article last year, the more I realized how the underlying work is replete with linguistic sinkholes due to its limited sampling of languages. Their findings, while interesting, demand plain English for ordinary users who just want to know the finer points that distinguish passive and active ~~morphosyntactic alignments~~ syntax.

Btw, whatever winds up here needs a contrapositive in the newly titled Ergative-absolutive alignment article. The opening paragraph there is minimally better than the one here, sans WP:reliable sources. Have at it! Cheers, and good luck. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 13:36, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Kent Dominic: I'm still thinking about it, also for Ergative-absolutive alignment. I think we cannot avoid to make a contrastive description in the lead paragraph. If we just explain what nominative–accusative alignment entails, this will appear most trivial for readers who are only familiar with languages of this type, so we should mention from the start that some languages align subjects of transitive and intrasitive verbs differently. I have found some nice and simple references for the basics of Nominative–accusative alignment based on examples from English, this material can be used to accomodate the suggestions by User:Jbening above.

Much of what you describe above is related to split intransitivity, which is present to various degrees in nominative–accusative languages. Another aspect is the way languages encode the difference between spontaneous and initiated events. Just speculating (I don't know much about Korean), your example about the different ways of expressing "delayed" in Korean may have something to do with the fact that the delay of the game is seen as initiated by an agent (someone actively defers its start for whatever reason), while the delay of the flight is seen as a non-initiaited event that happens because of external forces. These things go much deeper than mechanical alignment, and are variously discussed under the labels unaccusative, anticausative and maybe others that I have never heard of. The fluid borders between passive, unaccusative, anticausative verbs vary from language to language, also with respect to the subject. The pages about unaccusative and anticausative verbs should have much more cross-language examples based on comparative studies; such studies do exist (if we're lucky enough, even tree-free non-generative studies), so we can still refer to reliable sources. –Austronesier (talk) 07:36, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]