Case markers often distinguish between the various arguments of a predicate, such as the Agent and Patient. Three basic types of arguments are generally distinguished: the subject of a transitive clause, the object of a transitive clause, and the subject of an intransitive clause. <br><br>

A 'yes' value indicates that the language has what is known as a Nominative-Accusative system on <b>Full NPs</b> (not just pronouns), where the subject of transitive clauses is formally the same as the subject of intransitive clauses, but the object of transitive clauses is different. <br><br>For example, in Icelandic, the suffix -<i>ur</i> indicates nominative case on masculine nouns, while -zero marks the accusative case. In the sentence <i>Hund-ur kyssti hvolp-Ø</i> 'Dog-NOM kissed puppy-ACC', the form of the subject of the transitive clause, <i>hund-ur</i>, is formally identical to the subject of the intransitive sentence <i>Hund-ur sat</i> 'Dog-NOM sat'. It is the object of transitive predicate <i>kyssti</i> 'kissed', <i>hvolp-Ø</i> 'puppy-ACC' which differentiated from the other two. See Comrie (2008) for more information. <br><br>

<b>Note:</b> Languages have no overt case marking will be marked <b>N/A</b> for this property. <br><br>

<b>Reference</b><br>
Comrie, Bernard. 2008. Alignment of Case Marking. In Haspelmath et al. (2008), chapters 98-99. Available online at <a href=â€http://wals.info/feature/98â€>http://wals.info/feature/98</a href>. 
