Peripheral participants in an event may be construed as more salient in certain situations, and hence expressed by core argument phrases. In causative events, an external cause participant brings about the event, and is generally expressed as the subject (a more core participant). Causative constructions vary as to how the other central participant(s) is/are expressed, similar to the strategies found with transfer events described in Chapter 7. In events expressed by applicative constructions, a peripheral participant that is not an external cause is construed as more salient, and expressed as the object (a less core participant). If there is a third participant that is prototypically expressed as object, it may be encoded as object or as an oblique, if it is expressed at all. Applicative constructions may differ depending on the role of the participant expressed as object. Applicative constructions may also have the same form as causative constructions in a language. Finally, there appears to be a hierarchy of nonbasic voice constructions with respect to whether the verb is zero coded or overtly coded.

Clauses may represent one of three types of information packaging. The most common is topic--comment (referent--predication) packaging, assumed in Chapters 6–9. The topic may be the most central participant (the ‘subject’; see Chapter 6), or there may be multiple participants high in topicality. A variety of strategies is used when the most topical participant is not the most central one, or is not a participant at all. Thetic packaging does not divide a clause into topic and comment. Thetic packaging is associated with certain situation types (including weather), and discourse functions such as presentation and background description. Identificational packaging divides the information into a focus and a presupposed open proposition (POP). A number of contexts are typically construed as identificational, including questions and answers and different types of contrast. Thetic and identificational strategies include distinct prosody and word order, and/or distinct morphosyntax. Most thetic strategies involve making the subject argument phrase look less like a subject, and/or making the predicate look less like a predicate. Identificational strategies include clefts and ellipsis.

Stative complex predicates consist of a stative concept combined with an eventive concept. Stative complex predicates may be participant-oriented (resultative and depictive) or event-oriented (manner). All three types of stative complex predicate constructions share strategies, indicating that they belong in a single conceptual space. Strategies for stative complex predicates are recruited from complex sentence constructions, modification constructions, and even referring phrase constructions. A finer-grained functional analysis indicates that stative complex predicates are part of a modification--predication continuum. The function of ‘manner’ ranges from a stative construal of manner to a more dynamic construal of manner of how an event unfolds. The range of ‘manner’ includes expression as ideophones and how event ‘manner’ is expressed in combination with a form expressing the ‘result’ of an event.

Many types of event do not conform to the exemplar for transitivity -- namely, an agentive change of state event -- or the prototype of an argument structure construction, expressing an event with an acyclic (linear) causal chain. Reciprocal and reflexive events involve participants both acting on and being acted upon. Constructions for such events tend to recruit the prototypical transitive construction and evolve to an intransitive construction. Less prototypical bivalent events include motion, contact, and application/removal events. These events vary as to which non-agent participant is construed as core, and can be ranked on a hierarchy of transitivity. Experiential events involve an experiencer attending to a stimulus which in turn affects the experiencer; arguments of experiential events are expressed highly variably across languages. Ditransitive constructions are defined by the exemplar of the transfer event of giving. Ditransitive constructions differ as to the alignment of their nonsubject argument phrases with respect to the transitive construction, including the not infrequent neutral strategy in which both theme and recipient are encoded like transitive objects.

Prototypically, the central participants of the event are packaged as the core arguments of the predicate. The information packaging of participants in events need not follow this pattern. The prototypical packaging represents the basic voice construction; nonprototypical packagings represent different types of nonbasic voice constructions. The basic and nonbasic voice constructions involve a system of strategies: nonbasic voice constructions are differentiated from basic voice construction to different degrees, ranging from just word order differences to differences in the type of argument phrase a participant is encoded in. Passive--inverse constructions are used for a P (patient-like) participant that is more salient than the A (agent-like) participant; differential object (and subject) marking are similar in function. Antipassive constructions are used for a P participant that is even less salient than a prototypical P participant, and that is expressed by an oblique argument phrase or an incorporated noun (if it is expressed at all).

Semantic classes other than events may be predicated of a referent; this is nonprototypical predication. The primary nonprototypical predication types are object predication, property predication, predicational location, and predicational possession. In addition, clauses may express different information packaging than topic--comment (= referent--predication) packaging. The two main types of nonpredicational information packaging with nonprototypical predication are equational -- a subtype of identificational and found with object concepts -- and presentational -- a subtype of thetic and found especially with location and possession clauses. Strategies for all types of predication are recruited from action predication, predicational location, and possibly equational clause constructions; however, predicational possession has not been surveyed crosslinguistically. Presentational location and possession constructions employ a range of strategies ranging from recruitment of a verb form to expressing the location or possession itself as a verbal form.

Several kinds of relations between events often have distinct complex sentence constructions, in particular those involving degree, causation, factivity (epistemic stance), or a combination of these. Comparative and equative constructions compare degrees of a property predicated of two different referents. The strategy chosen depends on the strategy used for temporal complex sentences, at least for comparative constructions. Conditional constructions express a causal relation (content, epistemic, or speech act), but, unlike causal relations, also express a nonfactive (neutral or negative) epistemic stance toward the events. Past tense constructions are often recruited to express nonfactivity. Concessive constructions presuppose a causal relation that is unexpectedly violated; concessive conditional constructions are the nonfactive counterparts. Strategies use conjunctions recruited from conditionals or expressions of obstinacy, focus marking, and remarkable co-occurrence. Concessive conditionals use a scalar, alternative, or universal strategy to conceptualize the concessive conditional relation. Other relations, such as the comparative conditional, may also be conventionalized.