Let us consider a language that otherwise is fairly accusative in its alignment. Intransitive verbs of movement or transitive verbs that impart movement, however, have a somewhat ergative structure.
The absolutive is split up into a few subcases: each one correlating to one of the absolute directions (four or eight or whichever number the language has). The ergative is either the same as the nominative for transitive verbs or an instrumental or somesuch.
Thus, "I go north" is "I-abs-north go", "I hunted it northwards" is "I.erg hunted it-abs-north".
The directional cases are also used with verbs of location; however, with first and second person, and sometimes third person in proximity to the first person, this is omitted. However, if the speaker and listener are exceptionally far in some direction, the directional cases may be used with intransitive verbs (as well as when first or second person is the object of a verb of movement, that sets out to explain how come the person is exceptionally far from his usual geographical range.)
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