Ergativity, Valency and Voice

Description

This volume is a collection of articles concerned with the typology of valency and valence change in a large and diversified sample of languages that display ergative alignment in their grammar. The sample of languages represented in these descriptive contributions covers most of the geographical areas and linguistic families in which ergativity has been known to exist jointly with well-developed morphological voice, and some languages belonging to families in which ergativity or voice were not previously recognized or adequately described up to now. List of contributors Introduction Ergativity and voice in Mayan languages: a functional-typological approach Ergativity and the passive in three Mayan languages A tale of two passives in Cavineña The detransitive voice in Kryz Laz middle voice Argument demotion in Japhug Rgyalrong The Katukina-Kanamari antipassive Undergoer orientation in Movima Case patterns and verb classes in Trumai Ergativity in the Adyghe system of valency-changing derivations The evolution of transitive verbs in Basque and emergence of dative-marked patients Index of subjects Index of languages