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Share Paper 3564

Fake Arguments as Apparent Valency Changers: Evidence from Laz
Ömer Eren
191-200 (complete paper or proceedings contents)

Abstract

Pazar Laz (endangered, South Caucasian) has a syncretic verbal prefix, namely {i-}, which occurs in three different constructions. This prefix has been analysed as either a specific type of Voice head (reflexive or middle; La Croix 2012), or as an argument that occupies certain argument positions (Öztürk & Taylan 2017). Following the latter analysis, this study provides a uniform analysis for the syncretism and interpretation of this prefix. It is argued that this prefix saturates argument positions only syntactically but not semantically. Due to its semantically vacuous nature, this prefix appears to lead to different kinds of valency changes by occupying different syntactic positions, but it is indeed itself not a voice head.

Published in

Proceedings of the 38th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Rachel Soo, Una Y. Chow, and Sander Nederveen
Table of contents
Printed edition: $425.00