Valency change and causation

Valency and valency change are central topics in syntactic typology. Based on a genus-based sample of 41 languages, this chapter surveys strategies for signalling valency change across Australian languages, specifically, in causation and applicatives. The chapter starts with a discussion of the broad typological concepts involved and presents a definition of the categories of internal and external causation and applicatives. After introducing the sampling method, it then presents the affixes and multi-word constructions marking causation and applicatives as well as their (geographical) distribution. The chapter concludes that while some languages in the sample treat causatives and applicatives as a dedicated morphosyntactic class, both applicatives and causatives are mixed phenomena in Australian languages. This observation is explained by the suggestion that lexical, functional, syntactic and pragmatic factors play a role in the classification of (pro)nominal clause participants, and that for understanding valency in the respective languages these factors are variably relevant.