This book presents a functional analysis of a notion which has gained considerable importance in cognitive and functional linguistics over the last couple of decades, namely 'prototypical transitivity'. It discusses what prototypical transitivity is, why it should exist, and how it should be… read more
This paper examines the structural and functional links between symmetrical voice systems, typologically unusual and characteristic of western Austronesian languages, and systems of accusative alignment. It compares the clausal patterns of two closely related languages, Äiwoo and Engdewu, where… read more
This paper examines a comparative construction in the Oceanic language Äiwoo and argues that it differs from those known in the typological literature on comparatives on two counts. It is similar to a so-called ‘exceed’ comparative in involving a morpheme meaning ‘go far’; but unlike canonical… read more
This paper discusses the analysis of a particular class of morphemes in the Oceanic language Äiwoo, and argues that the difficulties in accounting for them in traditional terms such as nominalisation, compounding, relative clauses, or classifiers is due to their status as bound lexical… read more
This paper examines the argument-marking system in the Polynesian language Vaeakau-Taumako, which has pragmatically related functions similar to those found e.g. in so-called Differential Object Marking systems, but which does not refer to syntactic relations or semantic roles, the functions… read more
This paper examines the transitivity properties of eat and drink verbs crosslinguistically, and shows that they tend not to pattern with prototypical transitive verbs, but show various properties characteristic of intransitives. This is explained in terms of the transitivity model developed in Næss… read more
