As the title suggests, this book is a typological study of grammatical roles, such as Agent, Patient, Beneficiary, and of grammatical relations, such as Subject, (Direct) and Indirect Object, which are familiar concepts in traditional grammars; in addition it is concerned with the devices, such as the passive, that alter or switch (or ‘remap’ – see 1.1) the identities between such roles and relations. It will be apparent, however, in a typological study, that the grammatical systems of familiar languages are not typical of many of the languages of the world, and that the traditional terminology is inappropriate, as will be seen in the need to use such terms as ‘Ergative’, ‘Absolutive’, ‘Antipassive’ etc.

It should, nevertheless, be possible to suggest a consistent and reasonably simple overall framework within which such issues may be illustrated and discussed (though nothing is very simple in language). Yet very few attempts to do so have been made, and even fewer have been at all successful. The main aim of this book is to provide such a framework and to illustrate within it some of the typological characteristics of different languages. As such, it will not contain a great deal of theoretical discussion, though theoretical issues cannot be wholly ignored, for the framework must rest on certain theoretical assumptions and observations. One simple point, however, should be made: a typological study is concerned with similarities and differences between languages, and does not rest upon the assumption that there are universal (and identical) features across languages (see Palmer 1986: 2–3 and, for a more detailed theoretical discussion, Croft 1991: 17–32).