Applicative constructions (henceforth, “applicatives”) allow languages to express what otherwise would be expressed as an oblique participant as a core object participant. For instance, in Hakha Lai, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in western Burma, a comitative participant (“with X”) may be obliquely marked, as in the sentence lawthlawpaa=hee ka-kal “I went with the farmer.” In this sentence an oblique comitative is expressed via the clitic postposition =hee (“with”). The verb stem kal “go” is prefixed with a first-person singular participant marker, ka-. Hakha Lai alternatively may express comitative participants by means of a bare, non-oblique object noun phrase, as in the sentence lawthlawpaa ka-kal-pii “I went with the farmer.” In this version, note that the verb is suffixed by -pii, the comitative applicative marker. We can refer to the object in the second sentence as the applicative object. The oblique comitative in the first sentence is syntactically distinct from a normal transitive object in many respects; the comitative in the second sentence, on the other hand, is syntactically identical to a normal transitive object. The term “applicative” is also used for cases in which only the verbally marked variant is possible, although not all researchers would regard such formations as true applicatives. More recently, the term “applicative” has been extended (in the Generative theoretical literature) to refer to other cases of constructions involving multiple objects, including instances where there is no verbal applicative marker and even instances where the objects in question do not bear the same case. Much of the research on applicatives has focused on aspects of their synchronic morphosyntax. In particular, treatments of the phenomenon in specific languages have concentrated on the status of the object that appears in the applicative with respect to an alternative oblique instantiation for such a participant and with respect to normal transitive objects. A further major issue has been the status of additional objects, including the object representing a P participant associated with the basic predicate, widely referred to as the base object, vis-à-vis an applicative object, or the object associated with the applicative marking morphology. A handful of studies have attempted to treat the grammaticalization sources for applicative constructions, in particular the morphology signaling the construction on the verb. Finally, a few studies have attempted to evaluate the function of applicatives in running discourse.
Restrictions on “Low” person agreement in Dutch specificational
copular constructions
