is high for words of three syllables or less; for words with four or more syllables, the ends of the word have high tone, with a low tone in the middle of the word. In most African languages with a marked nominative, the nominative is used for subjects following the verb, the absolutive with the copula, with subjects in focus position before the verb, and in all other situations. Okinawan, a Japonic language, is generally a marked nominative language where nominative subjects are marked with the case particles ga or nu depending on their level of animacy. Unmarked nouns are by default in the accusative case. However, some verbs of existence and emergence may also have optionally unmarked nominative subjects. See also Morphosyntactic alignment Notes References Hinton, Leanne (1984). Havasupai songs : a linguistic perspective Kießling, Roland (2007). "The 'marked nominative' in Datooga", Journal of African languages and linguistics, vol. 28, no2, pp. 149–191 The World Atlas of Language Structures Online Linguistic typology