Zero-marked valency alternations in Macedonian
Zero-marked valency alternations in Macedonian

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses valency alternations without an overt marker in Macedonian. This seems to be an important typological feature that sets Macedonian apart from the other Slavic languages. The study provides a general description of the lability tendencies in Macedonian regarding its syntactic, semantic and distributional characteristics. About 150 verbs of this kind were detected and analysed. They fall into patient and agent preserving lability: verbs of the former type preserve the patient type participant, but in a different syntactic position (Toj sedna – Tie go sednaa ‘He sat – They seated him’), the latter keep the agent in subject position in both frames (Taa odi po poleto – Taa go odi poleto ‘She goes across the field – She goes the field’). The verbs are classified according to syntactic and semantic criteria, with the aim of determining the most common event types that allow such valence alternations, as well as identifying some prevailing semantic correlations between the verb pairs.

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