Rethinking alignment typology

Considering the standard typological distinction between ergative and accusative alignment, this article argues that the variety of phenomena suggests the need for a more fine-grained classification of alignment types. We start from the observation that grammatical processes may or may not apply to all the grammatical functions, leading to a basic division in complete and incomplete types. It follows that “ergative” is just one of 18 alignment types, while some incomplete alignment types that look ergative are in fact different, and closer to the family of accusative types