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Contrastive Studies in Verbal Valency
Edited by Lars Hellan, Andrej L. Malchukov and Michela Cennamo
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 237] 2017
► pp. 151–174

Non-canonical valency patterns in Basque, variation and evolution

| Université Lumière – Lyon 2
| Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour-IKER UMR 5478

In Standard Basque and in most present-day dialects, coding frames that were exceptional in Old Basque are attested by a sizeable proportion of the verbal lexicon, which results in a system characterized by a typologically uncommon type of split intransitivity. In this paper, we discuss the factors that may have played a role in the expansion of ergative encoding and more specifically of the coding frames <erg> and <erg, dat>, which originally were clearly non-canonical. We argue that the situation observed in present-day Basque implies a change in the constraints underlying the organization of the valency properties of Basque verbs or in their relative ranking.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Coding frames: Definition and classification
  • 3.Non-canonical coding frames: First observations
  • 4.Some particularities of Basque valency grammar
    • 4.1Valency-changing derivations and valency alternations
    • 4.2Verbs and light verb compounds
    • 4.3Anaphoric and non-specific readings of unexpressed absolutive arguments
    • 4.4Atypical objects
    • 4.5The fuzziness of the unergative vs. transitive distinction
  • 5.The expansion of coding frames lacking an absolutive slot in the history of Basque
    • 5.1Occasional changes and general tendencies
    • 5.2From ‘strict’ to ‘loose’ ergative coding: Evidence from aiming verbs
    • 5.3Relaxing the constraint on the obligatory presence of an absolutive term in predicative constructions
    • 5.4The integration of borrowed verbs
      • 5.4.1The situation in Modern Basque
      • 5.4.2The situation in Old Basque
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.237.05mou
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