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A number of languages have both ergative and accusative morphology. A typical example is a language that has nominative-accusative marking on verbs and ergative–absolutive case marking on nouns. Georgian has an ergative alignment, but the agent is only marked with the ergative case in the perfective aspect (also known as the "aorist screeve ...
That is, the subject of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive verb are treated alike when it comes to word order within the sentence, and agreement marks in the verb complex. Nominative–accusative alignment is one of the two major morphosyntactic alignments, along with ergative-absolutive.
In intransitive clauses, the subject can either be represented by a set A-person marker, or a set B-person marker, depending on aspect. In perfective aspect, Chol has ergative–absolutive alignment: the subject of the intransitive verb is expressed by a suffixed person marker, thus in the same way as the object of transitive verbs.
Sahaptin has an ergative noun case (with suffix -nɨm) that is limited to transitive constructions only when the direct object is 1st or 2nd person: iwapáatayaaš łmámanɨm ‘the old woman helped me’; paanáy iwapáataya łmáma ‘the old woman helped him/her’ (direct); páwapaataya łmámayin ‘the old woman helped him/her’ (inverse).
However, they are ergative–absolutive languages, and the more specific word order is intransitive VS, transitive VOA (Verb-Object-Absolutive), where the S and O arguments both trigger the same type of agreement on the verb. Indeed, many languages that some thought had a VOS (Verb-Object-Subject) word order turn out to be ergative like Mayan.
In other words, an A or S need not be an agent or subject, and an O need not be a patient. In a nominative–accusative system, S and A are grouped together, contrasting O. In an ergative–absolutive system, S and O are one group and contrast with A. The English language represents a typical nominative–accusative system (accusative for short).
This distinction determines which case the nouns will take: monovalent verbs are intransitive, and their single argument takes the absolutive case; divalent verbs are transitive, with the agent in the ergative case and the patient in the absolutive case.
This is in contrast with nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive alignment languages, in which the argument of an intransitive verb patterns with either the agent argument of the transitive (in accusative languages) or with the patient argument of the transitive (in ergative languages). Thus, whereas in English, "she" in "she runs ...