Two major case systems found in languages are the nominative-accusative and the nominative-ergative. In the nominative-accusative system, one case (the nominative) marks the subject of a verb, and the other (the accusative) marks the object. In the nominative-ergative system, one case (the nominative) marks the subject of a transitive verb, while another (the ergative) marks the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb.
The subject of a transitive verb is in the ergative case. For example, consider:
- The sun melted the ice.
- The ice melted.
In the first sentence, "sun" is in the ergative case and "ice" in the objective. In the second sentence "ice" is in the nominative case.
Compare nominative case, accusative case, dative case, genitive case, vocative case, ablative case.
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