Vedic preverbs as markers of valency-changing derivations: Transitivity and objecthood in Indo-European (Evidence from Old Indo-Aryan)

The present paper offers an analysis of the transitivizing and intransitivizing preverbs (semi-bound verbal prefixes) in Vedic Sanskrit. I will argue that the (in)transitivizing force of these morphemes is weak: the passivization test shows that transitivizing preverbs only exceptionally make fundamentally intransitive verbs true transitives, whilst the only intransitivizing preverb ví has but a rather limited valency-changing capacity.