For accusative languages, the corresponding default ranking would be nominative > accusative > other For languages with ergative alignment, the default ranking would be ergative > absolutive/nominative > dative > other This hierarchy is suggested to reflect the fact that the ergative case is almost exclusively used for subjects, constituents marked with nominative/absolutive can by subjects or direct objects, and the dative case can be used to mark subjects and both direct and indirect objects.
the hierarchies for both accussative and ergative languages correspond to the hierarchy for grammatical roles: subject > object > other So far, we discussed possible extensions of the current UniMorph schema that arise from our work on Caucasian and other low-resource languages.