direct-inverse marking

English

Alternative forms

• direct/inverse marking

Noun

direct-inverse marking (uncountable)

1. (grammar) An inflectional category encoding the relative animacy of the agent and the patient of a transitive verb. If the patient has higher animacy of the two, this is expressed using the inverse form of the verb; otherwise, the verb appears in direct form.

Synonyms

• inverse marking
• direction marking
• direct-inverse alignment