Applicative voice

The applicative voice (abbreviated APL or APPL) is a grammatical voice that promotes an oblique argument of a verb to the (core) object argument, and indicates the oblique role within the meaning of the verb. When the applicative voice is applied to a verb, its valency may be increased by one. Many languages have dedicated morphology (commonly several affixes), for applicative uses. This is common in the world's languages, particularly in highly agglutinative languages, such as the Bantu languages, Nuxalk, Ubykh, and Ainu.

Behavior

Prototypically, applicatives apply to intransitive verbs. They can also be called "advancements" or "object promotion", because they bring a peripheral object to the center as a direct object. This object is sometimes called the applied object. For transitive verbs, the resulting verb can be ditransitive, or the original object is no longer expressed. If the original object is no longer expressed, it is not a valency-increasing operation

Multiple applicatives

A language may have multiple applicatives, each corresponding to such different roles as comitative, locative, instrumental, and benefactive. Sometimes various applicatives will be expressed by the same morphological exponence, such as in the Bantu language Chewa, where the suffix -ir- forms both instrumental and locative applicatives. Some languages, such as Luganda, permit a 'second applicative' (known in Luganda as the "augmentive applied"), formed by a double application of the suffix. In this case the second applicative is used to give an alternative meaning.

Applicatives may also be the only way of expressing such roles, as in the Bantu Chaga languages, where instrumental, benefactive, malefactive, and locative are formed solely by applicatives. In other languages applicatives coexist with other methods of expressing said roles. In these languages applicatives are often used to bring a normally oblique argument into special focus, or as in Nez Percé, to keep humans as core arguments.

Similar processes

Applicatives have a degree of overlap with causatives, and in some languages the two are realized identically. While differing from true applicatives, a similar construction known as dative shifting occurs in other languages, including English. Also, the benefactive case is commonly expressed by means of an applicative.

Examples

English

English does not have a dedicated applicative prefix or suffix. However, prepositions can be compounded with verbs for an applicative effect. For example, from

• Jack ran faster than the giant,

the intransitive verb ran can be made transitive, and the oblique noun giant the object:

• Jack outran the giant.

The applicative verb can be made passive, something which is not possible with ran:

• The giant was outrun by Jack.

Swahili

Swahili has an applicative suffix -i or -e which appears before the last vowel of the verb. From andika 'to write', we get transitive

• Aliandika barua 'he wrote a letter' (a-li-andik-a he-PST-write-IND)

and ditransitive

• Aliniandikia barua 'he wrote me a letter', or 'he wrote a letter for me' (a-li-ni-andik-i-a he-PST-me-write-APL-IND).

Similarly, from soma 'to read',

• Alinisomea barua 'he read me a letter', 'he read a letter to me'.

These are sometimes called 'prepositional' forms of the verb because they are translated into English using prepositions: cry for, pray for, eat with, enjoy (be happy about), arrive at, sing to, sell to, send to, open (the door) for, reckon with, see for (himself), die at. However, this name is inaccurate for Swahili, which doesn't use prepositions for such purposes.

Yagua

Yagua is one language that has dedicated morphology for applicative uses. Here, the applicative suffix -ta shows that the locative or instrumental oblique is now a direct object:

(a.)	sa-duu	rá-viimú
	3SG-blow	INAN-into
	"He blows into it." (valence = 1)

(b.)	sa-duu-tá-ra
	3SG-blow-TA-INAN:OBJ
	"He blows it." (valence = 2)

This same -ta suffix can be used with transitive verbs to create ditransitives:

(c.)	sį-įchití-rya	javanu	quiichi-tya
	3SG-poke-INAN:OBJ	meat	knife-INST
	"He poked the meat with the knife." (valence = 2)

(d.)	sį-įchití-tya-ra	quiichiy
	3SG-poke-TA-INAN:OBJ	knife
	"He poked something with the knife." (valence = 3)

These behave identically as other lexical ditransitives, such as give and send in this language.