RCLT Local Workshop on Transitivity Bundoora, 4 September 2008 g.jendraschek@latrobe.edu.au Questions on transitivity: Iatmul and beyond Gerd Jendraschek RCLT, La Trobe University 1. Introduction Iatmul is a Papuan language of the Ndu family, spoken in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. If we add up all dialect groups and the urban diaspora, the total number of speakers may well exceed 40.000. The morphosyntax of Iatmul is half-way between agglutination and fusion, with some elements of polysynthesis, and the language is predominantly suffixing. Basic constituent order is AOV/SV, and both transitive and intransitive subjects appear in the unmarked nominative and are cross- referenced on the verb. In §2, I will give a short introduction to my use of the term TRANSITIVITY, as a property of both clauses and verbs. §3 will present constructions, verbs, and markers from Iatmul that are relevant for a discussion of the role of transitivity in that language. §4 will provide a summary and mention some additional issues that may be relevant for other languages. 2. Verbs in constructions • Transitivity is a property of constructions that usually correspond to a clause. As such, transitivity is a discourse phenomenon that involves much more than the argument frame of a verb. • On the other hand, transitivity is related to valency, i.e. the property of a verb stem to take a direct object and other complements (its core arguments), as opposed to mere adverbial adjuncts (peripheral arguments). • ‘Transitive verb’ is a shortcut for ‘a verb that can be used in transitive constructions’, in the same way as ‘transitive subject’ is a shortcut for ‘subject NP that appears in a transitive construction’. • In a given language, the relation between clausal transitivity and verbal valency can be tight or loose. If it is tight, the argument frame of a given verb stem is generally obvious and rigid; complements are often obligatorily realized, and there will be derivational operations to change the number or the morphosyntactic status of the verbal dependents. If the relation is loose, verbal dependents tend to be optional. In such cases, the number of overt dependents that come with a verb, and their marking is more a matter of semantics and pragmatics, rather than syntax.