In Nominative^x, Word order^x, Verbs^x

Although I'm a native English speaker, I've often struggled to understand English grammar, especially its morphosyntatical elements. I've done some reading on nominative-accusative as well as ergative-absolutive cases and I just don't get it. Can someone who's better at linguistics explain...

As to this, I'd like to put my two cents. When English retained cases explicitly, the subject noun and the complement noun linked by a linking verb were both in nominative cases. So, "I " in the normal word order. However, in Old English, inversion easily took place between the subject and the...