The Sinhala volitive/involitive contrast is characterized by verb stem and subject case marking alternations, and broadly indicates the volitionality/non-volitionality of the subject, plus other co-varying features. While superficially a high/low transitivity split à la Hopper and Thompson (1980), we argue that the distinction actually emerges from the interaction of just two factors: a realis/irrealis mode contrast relating to expectations of certain event participants and an independent semantic case system (building on Inman 1993). Co-variation of other semantic features – including volitionality – follows directly from their interaction with semantic case and modality. Explaining this transitivity split through the interaction of language-specific elements, our analysis refines recent Optimality Theoretic approaches to transitivity (Malchukov 2005, 2006) by partly obviating the need for separate, transitivity-specific constraints and constraint rankings.
2023. Middle voice as generalized argument suppression. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 41:1 ► pp. 51 ff.
Beavers, John & Juwon Lee
2020. Intentionality, scalar change, and non-culmination in Korean caused change-of-state predicates. Linguistics 58:5 ► pp. 1233 ff.
Aldridge, Edith
2015. A minimalist approach to the emergence of ergativity in Austronesian languages. Linguistics Vanguard 1:1 ► pp. 313 ff.
Beavers, John & Cala Zubair
2013. Anticausatives in Sinhala: involitivity and causer suppression. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 31:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
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