ConLing - How does ergativity work?

Almost regardless of how you go about being interested in language, a basic understanding of morphosyntactic alignment is, in the words of Kanye, "something that you need to have." It's what takes you from thinking about syntax in terms of the languages you know, to the world of ever-ineffable true thematic relations, a realm where theta roles are made up, that's kept generations of high linguistics students up at night.

I apologize for making this.

If, for instance, you only know English, or even if you're a well-read pan-European polyglot comfortable with French, German, Latin, and Russian, the concept of a grammatical subject seems absolute and immutable, a truth of the universe up there with gravity. As soon as you work up the gall to crack open a grammar of Basque or Tagalog or Guarani, though, this sure footing starts slipping away beneath you, and you turn to the only place you can - morphosyntactic alignment. The best way to start thinking about this is with a nice, clean example  - ergativity.