Transitivity, Valency, and Voice

Abstract

Transitivity, valency, and voice are at the very heart of the most basic aspects of clause structure in any language, but the details of the constraints that regulate the way verbs combine with noun phrases referring to the participants in the event they denote or to circumstances of the event vary greatly from language to language. The book sets up a consistent theoretical and terminological framework, novel in many respects, within which a typological approach to the phenomena commonly dealt with in terms of transitivity, valency, and voice can be developed. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on accounting for the cross-linguistic variation in this domain and capturing regularities in the variation. Much emphasis is also placed on the historical phenomena that may explain the emergence of constructions and markers and their evolution.