Chapter 8
Variation in the verbal marking of antipassive constructions
The coding of antipassive constructions displays
crosslinguistically irregular though noteworthy patterns. It
commonly involves a phonologically overt form, labeled here
antipassivizer. However, this segmental coding
is not the only way to signal an antipassive meaning. In some
languages, antipassive constructions can also involve a change in a
verbal stem. This non-linear morphological type of coding has not,
however, attracted much attention among linguists so far. It is the
aim of this study to fill this gap. Given also that an
antipassivizer may have different origins, another goal is to bridge
the synchronic investigation of these markers with their diachronic
description in order to provide a survey of the most common forms,
which developed into an antipassive function.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Segmental antipassive coding
- 2.1Syncretic and dedicated antipassivizers
- 2.2On the nature of antipassivizers
- 3.Non-linear morphological antipassive coding
- 4.Zero antipassive coding
- 5.Diachronic sources of antipassivizers
- 5.1Reflexive and/or reciprocal markers
- 5.1.1The syncretism between antipassive and reflexive/reciprocal markers
- 5.1.2The explanation for a reflexive-antipassive
syncretism
- 5.1.3The explanation of a reciprocal-antipassive
syncretism
- 5.2Incorporation of the hypernym argument
- 5.3Agent nominalization
- 5.4Action nominalization
- 5.5Person markers
- 5.6Causative markers
- 6.Summary and conclusions
-
Notes
-
Abbreviations
-
References
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