Transitivity and valency in Northern Akhvakh

Abstract

This paper analyzes transitivity and valency in Northern Akhvakh, a language belonging to the Andic group of languages included in the Northeast Caucasian (or Nakh-Daghestanian) family. Northern Akhvakh clause structure is characterized by an extreme flexibility of constituent order, omissibility of arguments with an either anaphoric or unspecified reading, and fully consistent ergative coding of core NPs. Northern Akhvakh has a very low rate of transitivity prominence, and an extremely strong tendency to derive the causal member of noncausal / causal pairs from its noncausal counterpart. Ambitransitivity is very marginal, and the productivity of morphologically unmarked valency alternations is very limited. Causative derivation is the only valency changing mechanism involving verb morphology, and ingestion verbs are the only transitive verbs for which causative derivation is productive.