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Katarzyna Janic. Synchronic and diachronic aspects of valency-reducing devices in Oceanic languages. the poznań Society for the advancement of arts and Sciences, pL ISSn 0079-4740, pp. 151-188 this paper sketches out valency-reducing devices available in oceanic languages. the proto-oceanic prefix *paRi-and suffix *-akin [i] are specifically the focus of the discussion, being approached from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. I explain the currently attested functions performed by the reflexes of these two morphemes by assuming that the evolution went in a particular direction: from a very general function to a more specialized, concrete one. among different functions performed by the reflexes of *paRi-and *-akin[i] within the valency-reducing domain, I will show that the antipassive has not been fully recognized and properly designated in linguistic descriptions of the oceanic languages yet.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper deals with the antipassive construction that has raised considerable interest in the syntactic description of ergative languages over the last few decades (Dixon 1979). Often defined on structural grounds, antipassive is said to be a derived intransitive construction with a two-place predicate, the object argument of which is either suppressed or realized as an oblique (Polinsky 2005). Tradition-ally, the antipassive is related to the ergative system. Although some authors insist on the link between the antipassive and ergativity (Dixon 1979, Cooreman 1993), certain typologically-oriented publications extend discussions on antipassive phenomena to accusative languages (Heath 1976, Polinsky 2005, Creissels 2006).

In this paper, we propose treating alignment shift as a process of functional markedness reversal in the domain of semantically transitive constructions. We illustrate how this approach allows us to capture similarities between the alignment shifts in Eskimo-Aleut and Western Austronesian languages, despite morphosyntactic differences in their voice systems. Using three diagnostics of functional markedness (semantic transitivity, topic continuity of P, and discourse frequency), we compare antipassive and ergative constructions in Eskimo-Aleut varieties and actor voice (av) and undergoer voice (uv) constructions in Western Austronesian varieties. We argue that ergative alignment is equivalent to a functionally unmarked P-prominent construction (e.g., ergative, uv), whilst accusative alignment is equivalent to a functionally unmarked A-prominent construction (e.g., antipassive, av). On this basis, we claim that both language groups are undergoing a parallel shift from ergative to accusative, since A-prominent constructions are functionally marked in more conservative varieties, but lose their functionally marked character and begin to function as unmarked transitive constructions in more innovative varieties.

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