West Greenlandic antipassive

Abstract

On the basis of syntactic and morphological evidence from West Greenlandic (WG) antipassive (AP) constructions, I argue against the view that the AP affix is nominal. The fact that the transitivizing and the antipassive affixes in a number of verbs are in complementary distribution, leads me to conclude that they both realize a light verb, transitivizing v, one on the ERG-NOM pattern, the other on the NOM-ACC pattern. Nominalization facts of the two clause types indicate their syntactic structure, with possible implications for the semantic interpretation of the object and the position of the ergative subject.

Keywords

• West Greenlandic Language
• Antipassive
• Transitivity