Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity

This book provides a general perspective on valency-changing mechanisms - passives, antipassives, causatives, applicatives - in the languages of the world. It contains a comprehensive typology of causatives by R. M. W. Dixon, and detailed descriptions of valency-changing mechanisms in ten individual languages by leading scholars, based on original fieldwork. The sample languages span five continents and every kind of structural profile. Each contributor draws out the theoretical status and implications of valency-changing derivations in their language of study, and the relevant parameters are drawn together, and typological possibilities delineated, in the editors’ introduction. The volume will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, and exponents of formal theories engaging with the range of linguistic diversity found in natural language.

• Innovative and theoretically sophisticated study of previously undescribed languages • Cross-linguistic parameters and generalisations that will be of value to formal theoreticians and linguistic typologists • Includes a comprehensive typology of causatives

1. Introduction R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald; 2. A typology of causatives: Form, syntax and meaning R. M. W. Dixon; 3. Valency-changing derivation in Central Alaskan Yup’ik Marianne Mithun; 4. Transitivity and valency-changing derivations in Motuna Masayuki Onishi; 5. Transitivity in Tariana Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald; 6. Voice and valency in the Athapaskan family Keren Rice; 7. Valency-changing derivations in K’iche’ Lyle Campbell; 8. Valency-changing derivations in Dulong/Rawang Randy J. LaPolla; 9. Valency-changing and valency-encoding devices in Amharic Mengistu Amberber; 10. Complex verb collocations in Ngan’gityemerri: a non-derivational strategy for encoding valency alternations Nicholas Reid; 11. Valency-changing derivations in Tsez Bernard Comrie; 12. Creek voice: Beyond valency Jack Martin.

‘This book is a grammatical sampler, and as such a joy in itself to typologists. Theory falls away, and the languages speak through their interpreters.’ Modern Language Review