Tripartite language

A tripartite language, also called an ergative–accusative language, is one that treats the agent of a transitive verb, the patient of a transitive verb, and the single argument of an intransitive verb each in different ways. This contrasts with nominative–accusative and ergative–absolutive languages. If the language has morphological case, the arguments are marked in this way:

• the agent of a transitive verb takes the ergative case
• the object of a transitive verb takes the accusative case
• the single argument of an intransitive verb takes the absolutive case