Morphosyntax Constructions of the World's Languages

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.