In the dialectal variety of Quechua spoken in the province of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, there are basically two mechanisms that allow the increase of verbal valence: through causatives or applicatives. Although there is an exhaustive description of the mechanisms of verbal valency increase by means of causatives and also an extensive explanation of the functioning of the so-called «transitional suffixes», there are no further details regarding their use with certain verbs in applicative structures and without describing this operation as a mechanism of valential adjustment. Based on recent and still ongoing research, we are rethinking these mechanisms, reanalyzing suffixes already described but now from this new perspective. In this paper, we present an advance of the results obtained so far.

The dialectal variety of Quechua spoken in the province of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, has basically two mechanisms that allow the increase of verbal valency: through causatives or applicatives. In a previous article we have described the mechanisms of increasing verbal valency through applicatives in the case of intransitive verbs. In this paper we return to this issue, extending the analysis for unitransitive and ditransitive verbs by means of examples with verbs of different valency structure. We have also considered cases of combinations between applicatives, their restrictions and the different interpretations that arise according to the context. The results obtained allowed us to determine the limits that verbal valences impose on the behavior of the different types of applicatives.