In some languages, accusative marking is only used whenever the subject is not clear from verb congruence, i.e. Yukaghir where first- and second-person verbs' third person objects always are nominative.
We could imagine a language where further, the presence of a third person nominative pronoun is also seen as sufficient to block accusative marking. (I.e. pronouns rank higher in the animacy hierarchy than nouns.) At this point, nominative pronouns might start appearing as subject markers in transitive clauses:
John he saw Eric.
And by merging onto the noun, the third person pronouns become ergative markers.
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