# Marked nominative alignment

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This article is about the alignment type with a marked nominative and unmarked accusative case. For the alignment type attested in some [South American indigenous languages](/source/Indigenous_languages_of_South_America) in which the intransitive subject patterns both as a [nominative](/source/Nominative%E2%80%93accusative_language) and as an [absolutive](/source/Ergative%E2%80%93absolutive_language) argument, see [nominative–absolutive alignment](/source/Nominative%E2%80%93absolutive_alignment).

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Linguistic typology Morphological Analytic Isolating Synthetic Fusional Agglutinative Polysynthetic Oligosynthetic Morphosyntactic Alignment Nominative–accusative Marked nominative Ergative–absolutive Split ergative Symmetrical voice Active–stative Tripartite Nominative–absolutive Direct-inverse Ditransitive/Monotransitive Secundative Indirective Zero-marking Dependent-marking Double-marking Head-marking Null-subject Syntactic pivot Theta role Word order VO languages Subject–verb–object Verb–subject–object Verb–object–subject OV languages Subject–object–verb Object–subject–verb Object–verb–subject V1 word order V2 word order OS word order Free word order Time–manner–place Place–manner–time Lexicon Color terms Numerals v t e

In [linguistic typology](/source/Linguistic_typology), **marked nominative alignment** is an unusual type of [morphosyntactic alignment](/source/Morphosyntactic_alignment) similar to, and often considered a subtype of, a [nominative–accusative](/source/Nominative%E2%80%93accusative_language) alignment. In a prototypical nominative–accusative language with a [grammatical case](/source/Grammatical_case) system like [Latin](/source/Latin), the object of a verb is marked for [accusative case](/source/Accusative_case), and the subject of the verb may or may not be marked for [nominative case](/source/Nominative_case). The nominative, whether or not it is marked morphologically, is also used as the citation form of the noun. In a marked nominative system, on the other hand, it is the nominative case alone that is usually marked morphologically, and it is the unmarked accusative case that is used as the citation form of the noun.[1] The unmarked accusative (sometimes called [absolutive](/source/Absolutive_case)) is typically also used with a wide range of other functions that are associated with the nominative in nominative-accusative languages; they often include the [subject complement](/source/Subject_complement) and a subject moved to a more prominent place in the sentence in order to express topic or focus.[2]

## Distribution

Marked nominative languages are relatively rare. They are well-documented in only two regions of the world: in northern Africa, where they occur in many languages of the [Cushitic](/source/Cushitic_languages), [Omotic](/source/Omotic_languages) and [Berber](/source/Berber_languages) branches of the [Afroasiatic](/source/Afroasiatic_languages) family, as well as in the [Surmic](/source/Surmic_languages) and [Nilotic languages](/source/Nilotic_languages) of the [Eastern Sudanic](/source/Eastern_Sudanic_languages) family;[2] and in the southwestern United States and adjacent parts of Mexico, where they are characteristic of the [Yuman](/source/Yuman_languages) family. Other languages interpreted by some authors as having a marked nominative system include [Igbo](/source/Igbo_language), [Aymara](/source/Aymara_language) and [Wappo](/source/Wappo_language). It is also proposed that marked-nominative alignment can be reconstructed for the ancestor of the [Afroasiatic languages](/source/Afroasiatic_languages), viz. [Proto-Afroasiatic](/source/Proto-Afroasiatic_language).[3]

In Yuman and many of the Cushitic languages, however, the nominative is not always marked for reasons that are not known. There may, therefore, be not a strict case system but a reflection of discourse patterns or other non-[semantic](/source/Semantics) parameters. However, the Yuman language [Havasupai](/source/Havasupai_language) is reported to have a purely syntactic case system, with a suffix *-č* marking all subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs but not of the copula; in the Nilotic language [Datooga](/source/Datooga_language), the system is also reported to be purely syntactic.

As in many Nilotic languages, Datooga case is marked by tone. The absolutive case has the unpredictable tone of the citation form of the noun, but the nominative is marked by a characteristic tone that obliterates the lexical tone. The tone is high for words of three syllables or less; for words with four or more syllables, the ends of the word have high tone, with a low tone in the middle of the word.

In most African languages with a marked nominative, the nominative is used for subjects following the verb, the absolutive with the copula, with subjects in focus position before the verb, and in all other situations.

[Okinawan](/source/Okinawan_language), a [Japonic language](/source/Japonic_language), is generally a marked nominative language where nominative subjects are marked with the case particles *ga* or *nu* depending on their level of [animacy](/source/Animacy). Unmarked nouns are by default in the accusative case. However, some verbs of existence and emergence may also have optionally unmarked nominative subjects.[4]

[Savosavo](/source/Savosavo_language), a [papuan](/source/Papuan_languages) languague spoken in [Soloman Islands](/source/Solomon_Islands), marks the nominative case with a clitic at the end of the noun phrase, while there is no accusative case marker.[5]

## See also

- [Morphosyntactic alignment](/source/Morphosyntactic_alignment)

- [Active language](/source/Active%E2%80%93stative_alignment)

## Notes

1. **[^](#cite_ref-Dixon1994_1-0)** Dixon 1994, pp. 63–67

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-Koenig2008_2-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-Koenig2008_2-1) König, Christa (2008). *Case in Africa*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Satzinger, Helmut (2018). ["Did Proto-Afroasiatic have Marked Nominative or Nominative-Accusative Alignment?"](https://books.google.com/books?id=s7VGDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11). In Tosco, Mauro (ed.). *Afroasiatic: Data and perspectives*. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 11–22. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [9789027264572](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9789027264572). Open-access [preprint version](https://homepage.univie.ac.at/helmut.satzinger/Texte/MarkedNominative.pdf) available.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** Shimoji, Michinori (2018). "Okinawan". In Hasegawa, Yoko (ed.). *The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics*. Cambridge Handbooks of Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 104–107. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1017/9781316884461](https://doi.org/10.1017%2F9781316884461). [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [9781316884461](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781316884461).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** Wegener, Claudia (2012). *A Grammar of Savosavo*. Berlin: De Gruyter. pp. 134–6. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [9783110289657](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9783110289657).

## References

- [Dixon, Robert M. W.](/source/Robert_M._W._Dixon) (1994). [*Ergativity*](https://archive.org/details/ergativity0000dixo). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

- Hinton, Leanne (1984). *Havasupai songs : a linguistic perspective*

- Kießling, Roland (2007). "The 'marked nominative' in Datooga", *Journal of African languages and linguistics,* vol. 28, no2, pp. 149–191

- Suda, Junichi (2025). “*The* *Late-Klimov Model* for Typological Classification of Active, Ergative, and Nominative Languages ― Re-evaluation of *the Five Macroroles Model*, et al.”. *Typological Studies* 7: 83-109.

- *The World Atlas of Language Structures Online*[\[1\]](https://wals.info/feature/98)

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