APmk=WO: The agent and patient are marked through the use of word order.

APmkNon: The language has no strategies to distinguish agent and patient.

APmk=Case: The agent and patient are marked through the use of case marking alignment.

(1a) īki qɔ̄t wär-ʌ.

man house make-prs.3sg

‘The man is building a house.’ (L. N. K.)

(1b) īki wär-ʌ qɔ̄t.

man make-prs.3sg house

‘The man is building a house.’ (L. N. K.)

(2a) āŋki ńēwrem-əʌ ʌāpət-ʌ.

mother child-3sg feed-prs.3sg

‘The mother is feeding the child.’

(2b) āŋki ʌüw-at ʌāpət-ʌ.

mother he/she-acc feed-prs.3sg

‘The mother is feeding him/her.’

Since the Surgut Khanty noun declension does not differentiate between the nominative and the accusative, the agent and the patient roles are typically reflected by the word order. The default word order is SOV, thus the patient usually follws the agent (1a), (2b). In natural language use, the word order might change which leaves the interpretation of the sentence to contextual and semantic clues (1b). Only personal pronouns have accusative forms, thus personal pronouns as patients differ morphologically from agents (2b).