Absolutive caseIn grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative–accusative languages such as English. In languages with ergative–absolutive alignment, the absolutive is the case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb in addition to being used for the citation form of a noun.
Morphosyntactic alignmentIn 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 intransitive verbs like the cat ran away. English has a subject, which merges the more active argument of transitive verbs with the argument of intransitive verbs, leaving the object distinct; other languages may have different strategies, or, rarely, make no distinction at all.
Ergative–absolutive alignmentIn linguistic typology, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the single argument ("subject") of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb. Examples include Basque, Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, and certain Indo-European languages (such as Pashto and the Kurdish languages and many Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi–Urdu). It has also been attributed to the Semitic modern Aramaic (also called Neo-Aramaic) languages.