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Transitivity, Valency, and Voice

Creissels, D. (2024). Oxford University Press

A valency alternation relates two constructions of one verb, which express its participants as nominal terms with the transitivity-related roles A, P, S or X, as dative obliques, as implied participants, or not at all. Marked by verbal morphology it is a voice alternation, and the oriented types are defined by nucleativization, a participant becoming a core term, and denucleativization, a core term ceasing to be one, whether it is maintained in participant structure or suppressed from it. Symmetrical voices select a pivot without either and fall outside the typology. Alignment is reformulated as obligatory A-coding or P-coding, which split-S languages violate.

Implementation notes

The types of voice alternation are the substrate's (Syntax/Voice/Construction.lean), predicates on a pair of Voice.Constructions with the participant the type singles out as a parameter; Kind names them as the book does, for the rows. The semantic conditions that separate causativization from the other A/S-nucleativizations are not modelled; the rows carry the book's label. Reflexivization and reciprocalization share their structure, and what separates them, an individual or a group as S, is stated for §11.3's polysemy over the reciprocity quantifiers of Semantics/Plurality/Reciprocal.lean, with "a sizeable proportion" of the group read as all of it.
Frames record no dative oblique and no concernee, so D-applicativization and concernativization have examples but no voice.
The Obligatory Coding Principle is stated over the flags of S in the book's intransitive examples; the book's principle ranges over every verb's coding frame.

TODO

Chapters 2 to 7, and chapters 9 to 17 beyond their definitions, are not modelled.
The potential-participant condition on nucleativization (§8.1.6), the non-compositional readings of stacked markers (§8.4.3) and the diachronic scenarios are prose.

References

Creissels 2024, Transitivity, Valency, and Voice
Bahrt 2021, Voice Syncretism
Langendoen 1978, The Logic of Reciprocity

The types the book names

L63–80

L82–100

L102–104

The book's voices

L109–113

L116–118

L121–123

The book's voices of §8.3.4.1, §8.3.5 and §8.3.7 realize the types they are named for.

theorem voices_typed L125–131

instrumentNucleativization.IsASNucleativization ∧ (∃ (i : Fin obliqueApplicative.arity), obliqueApplicative.initial.construction.IsXApplicativization obliqueApplicative.derived.construction i) ∧ ∃ (i : Fin portative.arity), portative.initial.construction.IsPortative portative.derived.construction i

Built from , ,

L133–137

L139

English break is a decausativization in the fragment's own diatheses: the intransitive leaves the breaker out of participant structure and makes the thing broken the S, so it is not a passivization.

theorem break_decausativization L141–148

∃ c ∈ English.Verbs.break_.valency.basic?, ∃ d ∈ English.Verbs.break_.valency.diatheses, c.construction.IsDecausativization d.construction ∧ ¬c.construction.IsPassivization d.construction

Alignment and the Obligatory Coding Principle (§1.3.4)

The distribution of the types (§8.3.8)

L234–237

The book's examples

Every derived construction of the book's examples realizes the type the book assigns it, relative to its initial construction.

theorem rows_classified L315–320

(row : Datum) :

row ∈ Examples.all → ∀ k ∈ row.parse? "alternation" kindNames, ∀ init ∈ Examples.paired "initial" row, Kind.Realize (Examples.construction init) (Examples.construction row) k (row.parse? "new" slotNames)

Built from , , , ,

In Tswana (38), passivizing the applicative of the causative is the composite of the three alternations, through (38d) and (38e).

theorem stacking_tswana L359–365

Relation.Comp (Relation.Comp (fun (x1 x2 : Voice.Construction (Fin 5)) => x1.IsASNucleativization x2 2) fun (x1 x2 : Voice.Construction (Fin 5)) => x1.IsPApplicativization x2 3) Voice.Construction.IsPassivization (Examples.construction Examples.ex_8_38a) (Examples.construction Examples.ex_8_38h)

Built from

Classical Nahuatl (39) forms the passive of the antipassive of the causative, through (39b) and (39c).

theorem stacking_nahuatl L367–373

Relation.Comp (Relation.Comp (fun (x1 x2 : Voice.Construction (Fin 5)) => x1.IsASNucleativization x2 2) Voice.Construction.IsAntipassivization) Voice.Construction.IsPassivization (Examples.construction Examples.ex_8_39a) (Examples.construction Examples.ex_8_39e)

Built from

L376–379

L382–386

L389–392

Symmetrical voice systems (§8.5)

The passive, the applicative and the causative change the construction, so the symmetrical voices of Balinese are its agent and patient voices (§8.5.3).

theorem balinese_symmetrical L434–438

balinese.symmetrical = {Voice.patientVoice, Voice.agentVoice.marked [Morphology.Morph.pref "N"]}

Built from

The reflexive–reciprocal polysemy (§11.3)

A reciprocal event has a group as S whose members fulfill both roles of a bivalent verb "in their interaction with other members of the group" (§8.3.3); the guests greeted "another" member and were also greeted (§11.3.1). Read for every member, this is Weak Reciprocity, and on two participants it is the paraphrase of (30b). §11.3.3 explains the reflexive–reciprocal polysemy two ways: a reciprocal event is a reflexive event of a plural individual, the relation lifted to pluralities (Set.LiftRel) holding of the group and itself, and a reflexive event is the borderline case of a single participant. Its wording there drops "other": the borderline case holds for every member doing and undergoing, and fails for Weak Reciprocity, which no single participant satisfies.

On two participants the reciprocal event of §11.3.1 is (30b), John greeted Peter and Peter greeted John.

theorem weakReciprocity_pair_iff L482–489

{α : Type u_2} {R : α → α → Prop} [DecidableEq α] {a b : α} (hab : a ≠ b) :

Reciprocal.WeakReciprocity R {a, b} ↔ R a b ∧ R b a

Reduced to a single participant, every member doing and undergoing is the reflexive event (§11.3.3).

theorem liftRel_singleton_iff L491–495

{α : Type u_2} {R : α → α → Prop} (x : α) :

Set.LiftRel R ↑{x} ↑{x} ↔ R x x

No single participant is a reciprocal event in the sense of §8.3.3 and §11.3.1, so the borderline case of §11.3.3 needs that section's own wording.

theorem not_weakReciprocity_singleton L497–502

{α : Type u_2} {R : α → α → Prop} (x : α) :

¬Reciprocal.WeakReciprocity R {x}