Valence-changing morphology Conclusion
There are two basic ways of changing the syntactic valence of the verb. Some of the processes we have considered, notably the causative and adversative, introduce a new semantic argument in to the verb’s argument structure. Others (e.g. the passive) do not affect the argument structure but only change the Grammatical Relations that are assigned to one or more arguments.
Morphological processes of both types can, and often do, produce a change in the valence of the verb. However, it is not the case that every occurrence of one of these affixes must involve a change in syntactic valence. For example, the causative example in (20b) is mono-transitive, and so is the basic clause from which it is derived (20a). So, changes to argument structure do not always produce a change in syntactic transitivity.1 Syntactic valence changes only if the derived verb has a different number of term relations (subject plus objects) from the base form. For this reason, some authors refer to the kinds of alternations as RELATION-CHANGING PROCESSES. Whichever term is used, it is important to investigate both the semantic effects, including but not limited to changes in argument structure; and syntactic effects, in particular, changes in Grammatical Relations.
1. It is also possible to change the assignment of Grammatical Relations without affecting syntactic valence. A well-known example of this type is the “locative alternation,” John sprayed paint on the wall vs. John sprayed the wall with paint. The Indonesian suffix–kan often marks a similar kind of change.
