Nen Valency Patterns

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingEntry for encyclopedia/dictionary

    Abstract

    Verb indexes up to two arguments, undergoer by prefix and actor by suffix. Only around 25 verbs are morphologically intransitive: all but 4 of them belonging to a special 'positional' class, the rest being 'be', 'come' (lit. hither-be), 'go' (lit. 'thither-be') and 'walk'. Other syntactically monovalent verbs use a morphologically middle construction with a person/number-invariant prefix plus a person/number sensitive suffix. The 'undergoer' verb prefixes are used for both direct and indirect objects, though these are flagged by different cases (absolutive and dative) on the corresponding free NPs.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationValency Patterns Leipzig
    Editors I Hartmann, M Haspelmath, B Taylor
    Place of PublicationLeipzig Germany
    PublisherMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
    PagesOnline Database
    Publication statusPublished - 2013

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