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Verb Valency Changes: Theoretical and typological perspectives
Edited by Albert Álvarez González and Ia Navarro
[Typological Studies in Language 120] 2017
► pp. 286–304

Valency-decreasing operations in a valency-increasing language?

| National Research University Higher School of Economics
| National Research University Higher School of Economics

This paper surveys valency-changing operations in West Circassian (Adyghe), a polysynthetic language of the Northwest Caucasian family. This language has an amazing number of means to increase valency, which include various kinds of applicativization and causativization. In this paper we also present processes which may look valency-decreasing and argue that they do not necessarily remove arguments, even though some of them change transitivity. This implies, in particular, the need for distinguishing between valency change and transitivity change.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background on West Circassian
  • 3.Valency increase
    • 3.1Applicatives
    • 3.2Causatives
    • 3.3Summary
  • 4.Valency decrease?
    • 4.1Anticausatives
    • 4.2Agent suppression without detransitivization
      • 4.2.1Resultative forms
      • 4.2.2Facilitive and dificilitive
    • 4.3Means of detransitivization
    • 4.4Antipassive-like constructions
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.120.11lan
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