Arabic 'labile verbs' in Form III: Lability or something else

P. 258–284.

Letuchiy A.

The article discusses labile (also known as ambitransitive) verbs in literary
Arabic. I show that, though Arabic does not have a rich system of labile verbs,
some existing cases of lability (labile verbs of form III) are particularly interesting
from the typological point of view. Their unusual property is that the
opposition between semantically causative vs. non-causative uses (and number
of syntactic arguments) do not always correlate with syntactic (in)transitivity.
Verbs of form III have both possible types of non-standard uses: transitive non-causative
and intransitive causative uses, as well as the two standard uses (transitive
causative and intransitive non-causative uses). I link this non-standard
type of lability to some general features of voice and transitivity in Arabic. At the end
of the article, some cases of lability outside form III are discussed.

Keywords: переходность, causative, labile verbs, каузатив, valency change, актантная деривация, transitivity, арабский язык, симметричность, лабильные глаголы, Arabic language, symmetricity

In book

Valency changes. Theoretical and typological perspectives

Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017.