Interaction of Verbal Categories in a Typological Perspective

Abstract

The paper addresses the topic of syntagmatic interaction of verbal categories, following up on the pioneering work by V.S. Xrakovskij, as well as on my own earlier studies of resolution of infelicitous combinations of verbal categories (such as present perfectives). In this paper, I discuss conflicts between lexical and grammatical features of the verb, focusing on interaction of voice/valency and transitivity, on the one hand, and interaction of actionality and grammatical aspect, on the other hand. The paper demonstrates that the scenarios of resolution of conflicts are the same as those documented for cases of functional conflict between grammatical markers: a certain combination will be either excluded, or the respective category will be reinterpreted. The same tools used to constrain grammatical categories such as hierarchies of local markedness are shown to be able to capture interaction of lexical and grammatical features in the domain of valency and actionality.