Austronesian alignment is a rule in some languages that the subject (what is doing the verb) has to be more ‘animate’ than the object (what the verb is done to). What ‘animate’ means here depends on the language.
A sentence like ‘I see the rock’ would follow austronesian alignment, since I am more animate than a rock. A sentence like ‘the rock hits me’ however wouldn’t be allowed since the rock is less animate than me.
