Chapter in:
Antipassive: Typology, diachrony, and related constructionsEdited by Katarzyna Janic and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
[Typological Studies in Language 130] 2021
Polyfunctional vanka- in Nivaĉle and the antipassive category
Nivaĉle (Mataguayan) is a non-ergative language
of Argentina and Paraguay. It has a voice/valency mechanism that
resembles an antipassive. Stell (1989: 310) refers to
vanka- as an intransitive marker. Fabre (2015, 2016) glosses
vanka- as ‘antipassive’ but does not provide an
in-depth analysis. We examine vanka- as an
antipassive marker, but also its connection to other functional
domains and its use with certain intransitive stems. On intransitive
stems, its semantic effects range from strongly agentive to middle
meaning. It implies that there is an extra but unexpressible
‘non-specific participant’ in the context. The extra participant
implication suggests that vanka- may originate in a
third-person marker va- plus a ‘cislocative’ or
‘middle’ n-, plus a ka- which may
correspond to an ‘indirect possessive’ formative.
Keywords: middle, impersonal, non-ergative, split-S, Mataguayan
References
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