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Antipassive: Typology, diachrony, and related constructions
Edited by Katarzyna Janic and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
[Typological Studies in Language 130] 2021
► pp. 315–348

Chapter 10
Explaining the antipassive-causative syncretism in Mocoví (Guaycuruan)

 | The University of Texas at Austin
 | Universidad de Sonora
Among the polyfunctional valency markers, an antipassive-causative marker is a rather typologically unusual grammatical feature. This paper tries to explain the antipassive-causative syncretism in Mocoví, a Guaycuruan language spoken in northeastern Argentina, by examining the synchronic functions and the diachronic formation of the valency modifier -aɢan. We propose that both -aɢan antipassive and causative concentrate on the subject activity and involve the backgrounding of a core argument. These two functions, which are traceable to the formation of -aɢan from the state/change-of-state nominalizer -aɢa and the transitive verbalizer -n, work in tandem with the syntactic constraint of having only two core arguments per derived and non-derived transitive clauses, which crucially allows for the -aɢan reanalysis from causative to antipassive.
Keywords: syncretism, antipassive, causative, origin, evolution, Mocoví
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Linguistic family and typological profile of Mocoví
    • 2.1Guaycuruan family and Mocoví data
    • 2.2Nominal and verbal phrases
      • 2.2.1Nouns and nominal phrases
      • 2.2.2Transitivity and core arguments
      • 2.2.3Bound person forms and transitivity
  • 3.The synchrony of -aɢan
    • 3.1The -aɢan antipassive
    • 3.2The -aɢan causative
    • 3.3The -aɢan-aɢan combination: Antipassive + causative
    • 3.4Other intransitive causativizers: -aɢat and -aɢat-it
  • 4.The -aɢan formation and its evolution
    • 4.1The nominalizer -aɢa
    • 4.2The verbalizer -n and its verbal source
    • 4.3The -aɢan evolutionary scenario
  • 5.The origin of causative and antipassive markers beyond Mocoví
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations and symbols
  • References
Published online: 23 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.130.10jua
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Creissels, Denis
2024. Transitivity, Valency, and Voice, DOI logo
Janic, Katarzyna & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
2021. Chapter 1. The multifaceted nature of the antipassive construction. In Antipassive [Typological Studies in Language, 130], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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