Towards a generalized theory of applicativization in i*

Applicatives are a set of morphological and syntactic elements (often affixes) which typically have amongst their functions the licensing of a new syntactic object (Polinsky 2013). These constructions have long interested linguists because of the range of thematic roles assigned to their licensed objects and the (a)symmetry between the applied object and the base object. Most work on applicatives has essentially presupposed that the core function of applicatives is to license participants as full objects (i.e. recipients) and to introduce beneficiaries. However, more recently there has been a push to examine the “atypical” functions of applicatives (Pacchiarotti and Zúñiga 2022; Zúñiga and Creissels 2024). A finding of such work is a rather significant effect of the lexical semantics of the verb on the output of applicativization (Jerro 2023, Everdell 2023). Polinsky (2024) proposes a generalized applicative to account for the more broad set of functions that applicatives seem to have, here I attempt to make progress towards meeting that challenge.

I use evidence from O’dam (Uto-Aztecan > Tepiman), Kinyarwanda, and isiXhosa to motivate a modified version of i* which has its output entirely determined by its vP complement (rather than other types of complements) so that the output of applicativization is determined by generalized preferences in verbal augmentation determined by the lexical semantics of the base verb (e.g. intransitives are typically augmented to gain agents; Shibatani 2002) plus semantic competition with other equivalently synthetic verbal augmenting strategies in a given language (e.g. specialized causative or instrumental affixes). I finish my talk with an open question about the applicability of ApplP to double object constructions in languages like English.