Like Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Konkani and some other New Indo-Aryan languages, standard Marathi is a split ergative language (split for person and aspect). Only the third person agent (both singular and plural) in the transitive perfective clause is overtly marked with the ergative case [-ne] and the verb in such clauses agrees with the highest argument in the nominative case. In the standard Marathi sentence səšane ɡəwət khalle (rabbit-agent grass eat.PFV.3SGN; The rabbit ate the grass.) the verb ‘eat’ agrees with the number and gender of the non-case marked noun, ɡəwət. Similarly, in the sentence kaswane šəryət jiṅkli (tortoise-agent race win.PFV.3SGF; The tortoise won the race.) the verb ‘win’ agrees with the number and gender of the non-case marked object, ‘race’. Overt ergative marking is absent in standard Marathi in the first and second persons though the rule for agreement remains the same. The verb shows default neuter singular agreement when the object is case-marked. E.g. kaswane səšala hərəwle (tortoise-agent rabbit-to defeated; The tortoise defeated the rabbit.)

In several regional and social varieties of Marathi, however, the verb of the transitive-perfective clause optionally agrees with the subject of the clause. Thus, two values of this grammatical feature were attested across dialects of Marathi: (1) The verb in the transitive perfective clause agrees only with the non-case marked object; (2) The verb in the transitive perfective sentence largely agrees with the non-case marked object of the clause and variably with the subject of the clause. The geographical distribution and examples of the variant constructions are given below. 1.1 Variant 1: The verb in the transitive perfective clause agrees only with the non-case marked object

This variant construction was recorded in all the sampled districts in the state of Maharashtra.