Ebook: Object reduction in Aleut

Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Asian and African Languages and Linguistics, 7 (2012), pp. 5-23.Aleut does not appear to have antipassive constructions, as the related Eskimo languages so ubiquitously do. This lack may be the result of fundamental changes in the Aleut inflectional system, as suggested by Bergsland (1989, 1997). However, antipassivization is not the only possible means of decreasing valency by means of object-reduction, and a close examination of Aleut suggests at least three strategies for doing so. These include the use of a valency-decreasing suffix, simple omission, and reflexivization. In this paper, I explore the uses of each of these strategies.