Ergativity is generally defined as “a grammatical pattern in which the subject of an intransitive clause is treated in the same way as the object of a transitive clause, and differently from a transitive subject” (Dixon 1994:1). In terms of the “three primitive relations” that Dixon identifies as S ‘intransitive subject’, A ‘transitive subject’ and O ‘transitive object’ (Dixon 1994:6), languages in which S and A are treated in the same way, distinct from O, are called nominative-accusative, and …