(DoBeS, Volkswagenstiftung, 06/2013-12/2019)

This project investigates the encoding of events with three participants, such as transfer events (e.g. GIVE, SEND) or communication events (e.g. ASK, TELL) in a number of unrelated languages. The expression of three-participant events shows a high degree of constructional variation, both cross-linguistically and within individual languages, and thus presents challenging problems for linguistic typology and theory. The project uses corpora of (small) endangered languages that have been compiled within DoBeS documentation projects. The languages involved are: Beaver, Bora, Movima, Saliba-Logea, Savosavo, Totoli, Vera’a, and Waima’a.