Variability of morpho-syntactic coding of patient objects in Ket: detransitivizing

The paper deals with the cases of the variable change of syntactically coding a semantic patient object as a component of the semantic object category which is predetermined by the syntactic incorporating derivation process. The paper analyzes the case of the variable change of syntactically coding a semantic patient object. Two strategies of changing morpho-syntactic marking of the patient are identified: a transitive construction where a patient noun has a status of the direct object and an incorporative detransitivized construction where a patient noun is incorporated into the predicate verb. The detransitivizing technique is discussed in detail. The study gives evidence to the fact that the basic and derived structures are correlated using the detransitivizing derivation relations following the pattern «semantically and syntactically transitive construction» → «semantically transitive but syntactically intransitive construction». The variable patient coding is dealt with based on the diatheses and voice concept. In the context of detransitivizing, the correlation between the participant and semantic level units is not subject to any changes: the changes concern only the syntactic level where the alteration of the syntactic status of the referent of a semantic actant takes place. It is demonstrated that as a result of incorporating the patient noun loses its prioritized syntactic status of the direct object and its ability to control the verb agreement. It is argued that from a typological point of view incorporative detransitivizing has functional parallels with the syntactic transformation referred to as antipassive. The functional analogy to antipassive is manifested by the fact that in Ket when being incorporated the direct object placed in the originally privileged syntactic position in the syntactic and communicative hierarchies is demoted as far as its syntactic and communicative rating is concerned. However, the patient noun is preserved in the surface syntactic representation of the utterance. The basic functions of detransitivizing, i. e. the demotion of syntactic and communicative rating of the direct patient object, patient noun backgrounding, focusing on actional-processual situation component are highlighted.

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