Descriptions of antipassive constructions in
individual languages show that these constructions are often
compatible with only a subset of transitive verbs. There are
significant typological similarities between the sets of verbs that
allow antipassivization. The following properties are typical of
these verbs: (1) agentive A, (2) specification of the manner
component in the verb meaning, (3) lack of inherent telicity (the
transitive use can be compositionally transitive, but this is
cancelled under antipassivization), (4) narrow class of potential
Ps, and (5) affectedness of A. Verbs with all of the properties in
(1)–(5), such as ‘eat’, constitute the core of “natural
antipassives”, whereas verbs with only some of these properties are
at the periphery of this class. Apart from being especially prone to
enter antipassive constructions, the fuzzy class of natural
antipassives is relevant for a number of phenomena. First,
polyfunctional valency-related markers or constructions tend to
yield antipassive reading when applied to natural antipassives.
Second, natural antipassives tend to choose the less marked
construction in languages with two antipassive constructions. Third,
lexicalization of antipassives is more likely for verbs that lack
natural antipassive properties, and a typical scenario of
lexicalization involves coercion of some of these properties.
Ultimately, I conjecture that it is the relevance of the P-argument
for the meaning of the verb which accounts for the rarity of
lexically unrestricted and semantically uniform antipassive
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