To see why a single case can play such distinct roles at all, read morphosyntactic alignment, and also a short table about it.
It has agreement between subject and object, and a split-ergative morphosyntactic system.
For example, in the typological tradition agents/actors are tied closely to the notion of subject (S).
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The morphosyntactic alignment of Mixe is ergative and it also has an obviative system which serves to distinguish between verb participants in reference to its direct–inverse system.
A nominative–absolutive language, also called a marked nominative language, is a language with an unusual morphosyntactic alignment similar to, and often considered a subtype of, a nominative–accusative alignment.