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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. 228–255

The antipassive marking in Mocoví

Forms and functions

| University of Texas at Austin
| Universidad de Sonora

This paper presents the two different antipassive markers (suffixes -(a)ɢan and -(a)taɢan) that can be observed in Mocoví, addressing both their forms and functions. Besides the morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic features that are synchronically involved in Mocoví antipassive constructions, the study considers the functional overlaps between these two antipassive markings and causative, aspectual and agentive nominal meanings. Based on these characteristics, it will be proposed that the primary functions of both suffixes are to highlight the predicate activity and to downgrade the object/patient participant and thereby, as a consequence, to focus on the participant that carries out this activity, that is, the subject/agent. As Mocoví is a non-ergative language, this paper also contributes to the typological discussion about the relation between antipassives and ergativity, confirming that the marked antipassive construction is not exclusive of ergative languages.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Mocoví language and data
  • 3.Antipassive constructions
    • 3.1Definition and functions
  • 4.Main features of the active clause in Mocoví
    • 4.1The nominal phrases and independent pronouns coding
    • 4.2Verbal indexing
    • 4.3Word order
  • 5.The Mocoví antipassive
    • 5.1The -(a)ɢan marker
      • 5.1.1-(a)ɢan as an antipassive marker
      • 5.1.2The -(a)ɢan antipassive-causative syncretism
    • 5.2The -(a)taɢan marker
      • 5.2.1-(a)taɢan as an antipassive marker
      • 5.2.2The -(a)taɢan marker and the overlap with agentive nominal meaning and aspect
    • 5.3Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.120.09jua
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