Mismatch: morphosyntax: passive, causative
All verbs contain one of four so-called classifiers immediately before the verb stem: Ø-, h-, d- or l-. Classifiers have a dual role: on the one hand they are productively used to mark valency changes, while on the other hand, they may be an arbitrary feature of certain verbs, unconnected to valence. It is this latter role that one can construe as a mismatch, in as much as the grammatical function of the classifier is suspended for these verbs.
The classifier Ø- is the basic intransitive prefix, while the other classifiers mark valency changes: h- is a causative, and d- a middle prefix (Rice 2000: 223); l- is a predictable variant of d-.1 Their various functions are illustrated below:| intransitive Ø- | → | causative h- |
| ʔįyę wegǫ | ʔįyę wehgǫ | |
| 'The meat is dried.' | 'S/he dries the meat.' |
| intransitive Ø- | → | possessive h- |
| bet'ádéʔa | yet'ádéhʔa | |
| 'Post sticks up.' | 'S/he has post stuck up.' |
| active Ø- | → | passive d- |
| X relu | X redlu | |
| 'S/he sews X.'' | 'X is sewn.' |
| active h- | → | passive l- |
| X dehsa | X deza (< *delsa) | |
| 'S/he rings X.' | 'X is rung.' |
| transitive h- | → | reflexive d- |
| rá-ye-ríhwi | rárígwi (< *rárídwi) | |
| 'S/he warms it.' | 'S/he warms her/himself.' |
Typically, though, the reflexive use of d- is a concommittant of some other prefix such as reflexive ʔede- or benefactive de-. Other prefixes associated with d- include the reciprocal, the dual, and a prefix meaning 'back, customary'. 'In all cases, the action essentially returns on itself.' (Rice 1989: 465)
Although these grammatical uses of the classifiers are productive, in other verbs they are simply lexically specified. Rice illustrates this by giving examples (Rice 1989: 466-7) where an alternation of classfier does not seem to be related in any obvious way to the valence-changing functions described above. gives some examples of different classificatory verbs (verbs which describe features of the object, such as size or shape) which differ only on the basis of their classifier, without this being related in any obvious way to the valence-changing functions described above (Rice 1989: 466). For example, the root -tįh means 'handle rigid, sticklike object' with the Ø- classifier, but 'handle large contained object' with the h- classifier. Perhaps more strikingly, there are verbs which are suppletive for verbal number where the different number stems have different classifiers, e.g. d-tla 'go.SG/DU' ~ go-h-whi 'go.PL', Ø-da 'sit.SG' ~ d-kw'i 'sit.PL '.
1 The classifier l- is underlyingly d-+h-, so that the alternations Ø- ~ d- and h- ~ l- represent the same morphological operation, namely addition of d-.
References
Rice, Keren. 1989. A grammar of Slave. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Rice, Keren. 2000. Athapascan. In: R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Aikhenvald (eds) Changing valency: case studies in transitivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 173-235.