Board Thread:Linguistics/@comment-25410520-20150118055513/@comment-25438171-20150118220630

The best example I know is 'break' (although it's really more a causative in the transitive). One has The window broke and I broke the window. In both, the window is the thing breaking, but it's the 'subject' in the first and the 'object' in the second. If English has absolutely no case marking (even in the pronouns), you could say window is always in the absolutive, and 'I' here is in the ergative.