The antipassive function in accusative languages

  Contact person

Katarzyna JANIC

---

Scientific framework and objectives

The main aim of this doctoral dissertation is to integrate the study of the antipassive function of SE-verbs in different language families (Slavonic, Romance, Oceanic, Turkic, Bantu) into a new typological perspective. This means that the se morpheme is no longer viewed as a reflexive and/or reciprocal pronoun but it is considered to be a formal marker that operates on the verbal valency. Thus, in addition to middle forms, it triggers also passive, antipassive and/or impersonal operations. This study also questions a general opinion according to which the antipassive construction is limited to the ergative languages only. It analyses the antipassive construction both from semantic and syntactic point of view in a crosslinguistic perspective.

---