A tripartite language is one that marks the agent, experiencer, and patient verb arguments each in different ways. If the language has morphological case , the arguments are marked as so:

• the agent is marked with the ergative case
• the experiencer is marked with the intransitive case
• the patient is marked with the accusative case

Languages lacking case inflections may indicate case with a fixed word order.

Tripartite languages are rare. Some examples are Indo-Aryan, Wangkumara, and Kalaw Lagaw Ya .