Prototypically, applicatives apply to intransitive verbs. They can also be called "advancements" or "object promotion" because they bring a peripheral object to the centre 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
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 languageChewa, where the suffix-ir- forms both instrumental and locative applicatives. Some languages, such as Luganda, permit a 'second applicative', 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 BantuChaga languages, where instrumental, benefactive, malefactive, and locative are formed solely by applicatives. In other languages, applicatives coexist with other methods of expressing said roles. They are often used to bring a normally oblique argument into special focus, or as in Nez Percé, to keephumans as core arguments.
Similar processes
Applicatives have a degree of overlap with causatives, and in some languages, the two are realized identically. A similar construction known as dative shift, though different from true applicatives, occurs in other languages. Also, the benefactive case is commonly expressed by means of an applicative.
Examples
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 verbran 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 German prefix is considered an applicative by some, but other analyses reject this view.
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'
and ditransitive
Aliniandikia barua 'he wrote me a letter', or 'he wrote a letter for me.
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, arrive at, sing to, sell to, send to, open for, reckon with, see for, die at. However, this name is inaccurate for Swahili, which doesn't use prepositions for such purposes.
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: This same -ta suffix can be used with transitive verbs to create ditransitives: These behave identically as other lexical ditransitives, such as give and send in this language.
