6. Valency, Transitivity and Serialization

This chapter offers an in-depth analysis of the argument structure of the Etulo verb, exploring how verbs differ in the number, the types of participants (arguments) they require and how those arguments are realised grammatically. Etulo verbs are classified into transitive, intransitive, ambitransitive, and ditransitive types, and further distinguished according to whether they belong to the class of “obligatory-complement verbs” (OCVs) or non-obligatory-complement verbs (NCVs). A central point is the distinction between noun complements that function merely as meaning specifiers versus those that qualify as true direct objects; this distinction is supported by features such as word order and pronominalization. The language’s rigid subject-verb-object (SVO) ordering is shown to play a key role in marking grammatical relations, especially since Etulo has limited morphological marking for objects.

In addition, the chapter describes how Etulo manipulates verb valence, adding or removing arguments through operations such as causativization and applicativization, and examines reflexive, reciprocal, and anticausative constructions. There is a particular focus on serial verb constructions: how they are formed, what semantic functions they encode (e.g. direction, benefactivity, comparison), and how they interact with transitivity and argument structure. A contrast is drawn between consecutive multi-verb constructions, where events are simply placed in sequence, and serial verb constructions, where verbs combine to form a unified predicate. Altogether, the data reveal that Etulo relies on syntax and predicate combinations rather than extensive morphological marking to encode complex events and argument relations.