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Adirect case (abbreviatedDIR) is agrammatical case used with all threecore relations: both theagent andpatient of transitive verbs and the argument ofintransitive verbs, though not always at the same time. The direct case contrasts with other cases in the language, typicallyoblique orgenitive.
The direct case is often imprecisely called the "nominative" in South Asia and "absolutive" in the Philippines, but linguists typically reserve those terms for grammatical cases that have a narrower scope. (Seenominative case andabsolutive case.) A direct case is found in severalIndo-Iranian languages; there it may contrast with an oblique case that marks some core relations, so the direct case does not cover all three roles in the same tense. For example, Dixon[1] describes "proto-Pamir" as having, in the present tense, the direct case for S and A and the oblique case for O (a nominative–accusative alignment), and, in the past tense, the direct for S and O and the oblique for A (an absolutive–ergative alignment). Because of this split (seesplit ergativity), neither "nominative" nor "absolutive" is an adequate description of the direct case, just as neither "accusative" nor "ergative" is an adequate description of the oblique case.
TheScottish Gaelicnominative case is also an example of a direct case, which evolved as the accusative became indistinguishable in both speech and writing from the nominative as a result of phonetic change. The situation in theIrish language is similar, though some pronouns retain a distinction (e.g. "you" (singular) - nominativetú, accusativethú)
In languages of the Philippines, and in related languages withAustronesian alignment, the direct case is the case of the argument of an intransitive clause (S), and may be used for either argument of a transitive clause (agent or patient), depending on thevoice of the verb. The other transitive argument will be in either the ergative or accusative case if different cases are used for those roles. In languages where a single case is used for the other argument, as inTagalog, it is called theindirect case. This is analogous to the direct–oblique distinction in proto-Pamir, but with the split conditioned by voice rather than by tense.