Change-of-state Paradigms and the middle in Kinyarwanda

This paper investigates the derivational relationships among members of verbal paradigms in Kinyarwanda (Bantu JD.61; Rwanda) by pursuing two interrelated goals. First, I describe a variety of derivational strategies for marking transitive and intransitive variants in change-of-state verb paradigms. Second, I focus on the detransitivizing morpheme –ik which serves as one possible marking for intransitive members of these paradigms. Ultimately, I argue that this morpheme is a marker of middle voice, and the variety of readings which appear with this form can be subsumed under a single operation of argument suppression. Finally, I provide a discussion of reflexives and the apparent lack of a reflexive reading with –ik by arguing that this reading is blocked by either lexical reflexives or the reflexive prefix i–

Spanish Anticausative Inherent Reciprocals and Syntactic Reciprocals with Se*

Este artículo explora la anticausatividad en español centrándose en un tipo de construcciones poco abordadas en este sentido. A pesar de la aparente homogeneidad formal de las construcciones recíprocas con se, este trabajo demuestra que hay dos tipos de estructuras bien diferenciadas y dependientes de propiedades semánticas asociadas con sus respectivas estructuras eventivas, dentro del heterogéneo marco de análisis de la inacusatividad. Este trabajo muestra que el clítico es una marca morfológica de concordancia en todas ellas, pero manifiesta diferentes funciones en cada una de las construcciones recíprocas: núcleo expletivo de Voz con casarse, núcleo causativo con mezclarse y una anáfora en posición de objeto con el resto de recíprocos sintácticos transitivos.Within the debate about the heterogeneity of unaccusative structures, the aim of this paper is to distinguish two types of Spanish marked anticausative inherent reciprocals (AIRs) from other syntactic reciprocals (SRs) with se. Several diagnostics show that AIRs such as mezclarse ‘get mixed’ are symmetric, unaccusative, telic, and show causative alternations, while SRs are transitive and vary in their aspectual properties and do not show causative alternations. The en/durante ‘in/for’ adverbials test reveals that there are two types of AIRs: achievements such as casarse ‘get married’, and degree achievements such as mezclarse ‘get mixed’. Although the clitic is an agreement marker in these reciprocal constructions, it is an expletive voice head with casarse, a causative head with mezclarse, and an anaphor merged in the internal argument position in SRs. Differences between AIRs and SRs depend on semantic properties associated to their respective event structures.Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Huelva/CBUA