Explaining the antipassive-causative syncretism in Mocoví (Guaycuruan)

Abstract

Abstract Among the polyfunctional valency markers, an antipassive-causative marker is a rather typologically unusual grammatical feature. This paper tries to explain the antipassive-causative syncretism in Mocoví, a Guaycuruan language spoken in northeastern Argentina, by examining the synchronic functions and the diachronic formation of the valency modifier -aɢan . We propose that both -aɢan antipassive and causative concentrate on the subject activity and involve the backgrounding of a core argument. These two functions, which are traceable to the formation of -aɢan from the state/change-of-state nominalizer -aɢa and the transitive verbalizer -n , work in tandem with the syntactic constraint of having only two core arguments per derived and non-derived transitive clauses, which crucially allows for the -aɢan reanalysis from causative to antipassive.

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