Background and aims

In the cases of genuine intransitivization (e.g. hebroke the vase vs. the vase broke), the
decrease in transitivity coincides with asemantic change, whereas de-transitivizing
alternations only reduce the structuraltransitivity (e.g. the vase was broken).

The basic idea of transitivity in the present study coincides with the traditional
principle that transitive events involve two participants one of which is an agent,
while the other can be labelled as a typical patient. Involvement of two distinct
participants is regarded as the most important transitivity feature here

1.2. Approach and methodology

The notion of
transitivity alternations is used in a somewhat unorthodox way on the next pages
(see section 5.1. for a detailed definition). Every possible change in the transitivity
of clauses illustrate a possible transitivity alternation

degrees of agency may vary. Changes in inherent transitivity are motivated by

changes between fully distinct events, while changes in contextual transitivity do not
affect the basic semantics of events

Agency and affectedness vary independently on each other, which

makes it necessary to use an approach that enables one to take account of these
differences

In the case of transitivity

alternations, we will not aim at proposing clear correlations between form and
nature of alternations. This means that a certain structural alternation can be
employed in the expression of numerous different semantic alternations

In addition to discussing the

semantic transitivity in detail, we also propose a structural typology of basic
transitive clauses and transitivity alternations

Semantic
transitivity is clearly the most appropriate starting point in this respect, since, as will
be shown (and as is generally known), the marking of highly and less transitive
events can be radically different

The goal is to show what structural features can be

considered relevant for the linguistic expression of high transitivity. In the last part,
we will dwell on the notion of transitivity alternations
2. ON DEFINING TRANSITIVITY

2.1. Semantic definitions (‘traditional transitivity’)

2.4. ‘Multiple definitions’

3. WHAT IS TRANSITIVITY (HERE)?
3.1. Some relevant notions
Ontological vs. ‘conceptual’ transitivity features

‘features of ontological transitivity are here

understood referring to the transitivity of events in the non-linguistic world’

The
label ‘ontological transitivity’ refers to events in the non-linguistic world ‘as they
are’

The most relevant ontological

feature of transitivity is the number of participants involved in an event and the
semantic roles associated with them

Ontologically, (two-participant) events that

result in a clear change of state of the patient are transitive, while those that do not,
are less transitive or even fully intransitive