In a language with a productive applicative morpheme, compare: 'She cooked food' (transitive, 2 core arguments) vs. 'She cook-APPL him food' (where 'him' is a beneficiary). Which statement best describes what happened to 'him' in the second sentence?
A'Him' was added as an optional adjunct prepositional phrase meaning 'for him,' leaving valency unchanged
B'Him' was promoted from a peripheral/optional role to a core direct object argument, increasing the verb's valency
CThe verb became intransitive to accommodate the additional semantic participant
D'Him' retains adjunct status and receives a special dative case marker rather than becoming a core object
Applicative voice is a valency-increasing operation: it takes a participant that would normally be expressed as an adjunct (an optional prepositional phrase like 'for him') and promotes it to a core argument position — a direct object of the verb. The applicative morpheme on the verb absorbs the function of the preposition; the beneficiary is now syntactically required (part of the verb's core argument structure) rather than optional. The result is a ditransitive structure with three core arguments: Agent, Applied Object (the promoted beneficiary), and Patient.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
Why are applicative morphemes more common in languages with limited case morphology than in languages with rich case systems?
ALanguages with rich case morphology have more complex verbal morphology that blocks applicative affixation
BRich case systems allow peripheral thematic roles like beneficiaries to be expressed directly with distinctive case markers, without needing to promote them to object status
CApplicative morphemes are genetically restricted to Bantu languages and do not develop elsewhere
DLanguages with limited case morphology have simpler syntactic structures that cannot express beneficiaries any other way
This is a key typological insight. In a language like Russian (rich case system), a beneficiary can simply appear in the dative case — the case marker itself signals the beneficiary role without changing the verb's core argument structure. In a language with little or no case morphology, there is no such direct flagging option; the language instead recruits verbal morphology (applicatives) to promote the beneficiary to object status where it can be unambiguously identified and tracked. The two strategies solve the same expressive problem through different grammatical means.
Question 3 True / False
An applicative construction increases a verb's valency by promoting an adjunct thematic role (such as a beneficiary or instrument) to the status of a core argument.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is the defining property of applicative voice. The operation takes a participant that would normally be expressed as an optional, peripheral prepositional phrase (an adjunct) and incorporates it into the verb's core argument structure as a new object. Valency increases — a transitive verb becomes ditransitive; an intransitive verb becomes transitive — and the morpheme on the verb signals this restructuring.
Question 4 True / False
In a language with applicative morphology, the applied object (e.g., a promoted beneficiary) retains its adjunct status and can seldom become the subject of a passive construction.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
One of the key diagnostics for whether the applied object has genuinely become a core argument (rather than remaining an adjunct) is whether it can be passivized — promoted to subject position in a passive construction. In well-documented applicative languages like Chichewa and Swahili, the applied object can become the subject of a passive, and it controls verb agreement morphology. These are signature properties of core argument status. If the applied object still behaved like an adjunct, passivization would not be available to it.
Question 5 Short Answer
What does applicative voice reveal about the nature of grammatical relations like 'object'? Use a concrete example to illustrate your answer.
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Applicative voice shows that grammatical relations like 'object' are syntactic positions that can be assigned to different thematic roles through morphological operations — they are not fixed to one semantic role. For example, in 'She build-APPL him a house,' the Beneficiary ('him') occupies the object position even though 'object' in the base verb 'build' corresponds to the Patient ('a house'). The applicative morpheme reassigns object status from the Patient to the Beneficiary. This demonstrates that 'object' is a structural slot in clause structure, not a semantic label.
This has major implications for syntactic theory: it means argument structure is not rigidly determined by semantics. A morphological operation can restructure which roles occupy which grammatical positions, showing that the mapping between thematic roles and grammatical relations is manipulable. Applicatives are thus evidence for the independence of semantic and syntactic levels of representation.