Abstract
As can be deduced from (b) and (c), the patient of typical transitive verbs appeared in the absolutive case, and with very few exceptions, monovalent verbs assigned the absolutive case to their unique argument, which resulted in a relationship between transitive and intransitive coding of the type commonly designated as ergative alignment (U=P≠A). The changes that have occurred during the past five centuries have not affected points (a), (c), and (d). As illustrated by Ex. (1), the valency frame of typical transitive verbs is still characterized by the obligatory use of the morphologically marked ergative case for the agent, and U/P alignment is still predominant.
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