Valency-changing derivation in Central Alaskan Yup’ik

Publisher: Ucla
Publication date: 2000
Number of pages: 19 Central Alaskan Yup'ik is a language of the Eskimo-Aleut family, spoken in southwestern Alaska by over 10,000 people. Like other languages in the family, Yup'ik has much to contribute to the study of valency-changing derivation, particularly because of its explicit specification of grammatical relations and its wealth of valency-changing devices. The roles of participants in events and states are distinguished both by case suffixes on nouns and by pronominal suffixes on verbs. The language is highly polysynthetic, with hundreds of derivational suffixes, many of which affect argument structure. The rich inventory of valency-changing devices provides a fruitful basis for cross-linguistic comparison, showing us ways in which such devices can vary in their semantic, syntactic and discourse effects.