Morphosyntactic Alignment
For meanings of the terms agent, patient, experiencer, and instrument, see thematic relation.
| Case | Usage | Example | Found in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Absolutive case (1) | patient, experiencer; subject of an intransitive verb and direct object of a transitive verb | he pushed the door and it opened | Basque |
| Absolutive case (2) | patient, involuntary experiencer | he pushed the door and it opened; he slipped | active languages |
| Absolutive case (3) | patient; experiencer; instrument | he pushed the door with his hand and it opened | Inuktitut |
| Accusative case (1) | patient | he pushed the door and it opened | Akkadian | Albanian | Arabic | Armenian (Eastern) | Armenian (Western) | Azeri | Croatian | Czech | Erzya | Esperanto | Faroese | Finnish | German | Greek | Hungarian | Icelandic | Inari Sami | Latin | Latvian | Lithuanian | Northern Sami | Polish | Romanian | Russian | Sanskrit | Serbian | Skolt Sami | Slovak | Slovene | Ukrainian |
| Accusative case (2) | direct object of a transitive verb; made from; about; for a time | I see her | Inuktitut | Persian | Turkish | Serbo-Croatian |
| Ergative case | agent; subject of a transitive verb | he pushed the door and it opened | Basque | Chechen | Dyirbal | Georgian | Samoan | Tlingit | Tsez |
| Ergative-genitive case | agent, possession | he pushed the door and it opened; her dog | Classic Maya | Inuktitut |
| Instructive | means, answers question how? | by means of the house | Estonian (rare) | Finnish |
| Instrumental | instrument, answers question with which thing? | with the house | Armenian (Eastern) | Armenian (Western) | Belarusian | Croatian | Czech | Evenki | Georgian | Latvian | Lithuanian | Manchu | Polish | Russian | Sanskrit | Serbian | Slovak | Slovene | Tsez | Ukrainian | Yukaghir |
| Instrumental-comitative case | instrument, in company of something | with the house | Chuvash | Hungarian | Tlingit |
| Nominative case (1) | agent, experiencer; subject of a transitive or intransitive verb | he pushed the door and it opened | nominative–accusative languages and nominative–absolutive languages |
| Nominative case (2) | agent; voluntary experiencer | he pushed the door and it opened; she paused | active languages |
| Objective case | direct or indirect object of verb | I saw her; I gave her the book. | Bengali | Chuvash |
| Oblique case | all-round case; any situation except nominative or vocative | concerning the house | Hindi | Telugu | Old French |
| Passive case or patient case or intransitive case | the subject of an intransitive verb or the logical complement of a transitive verb | The door opened | languages of the Caucasus |
| Pegative case | agent in a clause with a dative argument | he gave the book to him | Azoyú Tlapanec |
Read more about this topic: List Of Grammatical Cases