[Lingtyp] Double-marked passive
Martin Haspelmath
martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de
Sun Apr 4 12:39:47 UTC 2021
Many thanks for pointing out the relevance of this old paper, Randy!
Heath nicely contrasts his own functional and particularist approach
with Postal's categorial universalist position.
Postal (1977) says that he "takes it as a major goal of grammatical
theory to make available a restricted set of universal rules which ...
play a role in the grammars of individual languages. This is the
opposite of the position represented by the slogan /describe each
language in its own terms/."
By contrast, Heath says that he favours an "approach that presupposes
painstaking formal/functional analysis of particular languages and is
thus the opposite of the position represented by the slogan /describe
each language in universal terms/" (1978: 89).
Heath's paper is thus an interesting precursor to Dryer's seminal (1997)
paper on the non-universality of syntactic roles ("grammatical relations").
Best,
Martin
Am 04.04.21 um 04:24 schrieb Randy J. LaPolla:
> Hi All,
> I am just catching up on this list after some time, but in reference
> to the debate about passive and the question generally about how to
> compare constructions across languages, I’d jjust like to mention that
> Jeffery Heath once again was way ahead of the curve in a 1978 article
> in BLS arguing for functional universals:
> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2259z70z
> <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2259z70z>
>
> Although couched in an argument about Relation Grammar (remember
> that?) he goes into a discussion of how to compare passives and
> antipassives across languages, and has some interesting things to say.
>
> Randy
> -----
> *Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA* （羅仁地）
> Professor of Linguistics, with courtesy appointment in Chinese, School
> of Humanities
> Nanyang Technological University
> HSS-03-45, 48 Nanyang Avenue | Singapore 639818
> http://randylapolla.info/ <http://randylapolla.info/>
> (personal.ntu.edu.sg/randylapolla
> <http://personal.ntu.edu.sg/randylapolla>)
> Most recent books:
> /The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2nd Edition (/2017)
> https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324
> <https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324>
> /Sino-Tibetan Linguistics /(2018)
> https://www.routledge.com/Sino-Tibetan-Linguistics/LaPolla/p/book/9780415577397
> <https://www.routledge.com/Sino-Tibetan-Linguistics/LaPolla/p/book/9780415577397>
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 24 Mar 2021, at 6:51 PM, Martin Haspelmath
>> <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de <mailto:martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, Bill – I agree with all this. Indeed, the choice of
>> terminology is not straightforward and involves many considerations.
>> We don't want our technical terms to be polysemous, but we tend to
>> balk at too many new terms (I've had reviewers commenting negatively
>> on my submissions because of my neologisms).
>>
>> But I wanted to mention that I recently formulated a universal that
>> requires the definition of "passive" that I proposed earlier (in
>> terms of verb coding):
>>
>> "Universal 13
>> If a passive alternation is sensitive to givenness, then the passive
>> alternant tends to be used when the original A is not given
>> information and/or the original P is not new information."
>> (Haspelmath 2021: 155)
>>
>> https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ling-2020-0252/html
>>
>> If "passive" is defined functionally (as in Givón 1994), then this
>> tendency needs to be formulated quite differently. I'm not saying
>> that this is impossible, and I'm not even quite sure that the
>> universal is true. But what I like about Universal 13 is that it is
>> simply a special instance of a far more general universal (the
>> role-reference association universal, Haspelmath 2021: 125), which
>> also subsumes differential object marking and many other generalizations.
>>
>> Best,
>> Martin
>>
>> Am 23.03.21 um 19:56 schrieb William Croft:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> I'm afraid I will extend this discussion a bit longer...The
>>> fundamental issue is that in defining comparative concepts, one has
>>> to draw sharp boundaries on gradual diachronic processes that lead
>>> to synchronic continua of typological diversity. And then one has to
>>> choose terms for comparative concepts that in many cases were
>>> devised for non-typological theories based on a small, genetically
>>> and geographically narrow set of languages (Western European, East
>>> Asian, Middle Eastern, South Asian, to name some prominent
>>> grammatical traditions). There is no ideal solution, even among
>>> those who fully agree with the above statements.
>>>
>>> To elaborate a little bit: Martin's intuition about "passive",
>>> and the intuitions of many about defining a "construction", is that
>>> there should be dedicated morphosyntax for the function of the
>>> "construction". There was already an objection to this intuition in
>>> this thread, saying that multifunctional "passive" morphemes should
>>> not be excluded. More generally, a dedicated construction is a late
>>> stage in the constructionalization process. The first step is
>>> recruiting another construction, that is, recruiting a
>>> morphosyntactic form used for some related function. Then the
>>> recruited construction is gradually adapted to its new function,
>>> diverging from the form used for the original function.
>>>
>>> Recruitment is the basic strategy that starts the process towards
>>> a "dedicated" construction for a particular function. It's a gradual
>>> process. Any choice to delimit a comparative concept beyond the
>>> initial recruitment is arbitrary. The definition of a "passive"
>>> construction (in my terms) in terms of any form used to express the
>>> function is actually the least arbitrary choice -- except that
>>> functions (conceptual space) also form a continuum, so dividing that
>>> continuum is also arbitrary. But it's necessary for practical
>>> reasons, so we can talk about the phenomena we're studying. This is
>>> what language is about.
>>>
>>> And language is also about using shared terms in a community. A
>>> typological theory of, say, grammatical voice could invent entirely
>>> new terms because the "legacy terms" are not typological. But it's
>>> not like non-typological theories have a single agreed-upon
>>> definition of "passive", or "subject", or pretty much any other
>>> important theoretical concept. So recruiting the terms for a
>>> typological theory and defining them differently is not abnormal,
>>> though if it's too different then a new term may be better. (We may
>>> disagree in particular cases.) And in some cases there is continuity
>>> between the functional analysis proposed by non-typologists and the
>>> functional comparative concept that is useful for typology.
>>>
>>> I think there's another reason that typologists broadened
>>> traditional terms to the construction, rather than just the strategy
>>> for the construction typical of Western European languages. The
>>> point was to find (implicational etc.) universals that hold across
>>> all languages. So excluding many languages that don't use a
>>> particular strategy from the category in question is not helpful for
>>> that purpose.
>>>
>>> I don't expect we'll all agree on the choice of terms. For
>>> "relative clause construction", I have restricted the definition to
>>> modification by action concepts; so modification by property
>>> concepts is excluded. There are also theoretical considerations. For
>>> instance, I believe that grammatical voice is about the interplay
>>> between the relative salience/topicality of participants and their
>>> semantic (force-dynamic) interactions in an event. From that point
>>> of view, constructions in the functional domain of voice should be
>>> defined in terms of relative topicality of participants and by their
>>> force-dynamic interactions in the event.
>>>
>>> I just added the (draft) Glossary to the (draft) chapters of
>>> "Morphosyntax" that I have posted on my webpage
>>> (http://www.unm.edu/~wcroft/WACpubs.html), to give an idea of how I
>>> have constructed comparative concepts for many constructions.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> *From:*Lingtyp<lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>on behalf
>>> of Bohnemeyer, Juergen<jb77 at buffalo.edu>
>>> *Sent:*Tuesday, March 23, 2021 8:30 AM
>>> *To:*Martin Haspelmath<martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
>>> *Cc:*LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org<LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> *Subject:*Re: [Lingtyp] Double-marked passive
>>> [EXTERNAL]
>>>
>>> Martin, I don’t want to extend this discussion beyond its best-by
>>> date, but the example you cite...
>>>
>>> > So the reason I would opt for the form-based definition of
>>> "passive" (as opposed to the function-based definitions favoured by
>>> Bohnemeyer and Givón-Croft) is that the term "passive" is generally
>>> used for a strategy, in actual usage. It would be very odd to say
>>> that a sentence with a fronted object and focused subject like
>>> German "Den Mann hat der LÖWE gesehen" (= 'The man was seen by the
>>> LION') is a passive construction.
>>>
>>> … would not meet the definition of ‘demotion’ I was assuming in my
>>> definition of ‘passive':
>>>
>>> > A passive is a construction that combines with a causative
>>> description and whose semantic impact is the demotion of the causer
>>> while retaining the causative meaning.
>>>
>>> I would define ‘demotion’ such that the definition presupposes a
>>> default assignment of the highest-ranked semantic role to the
>>> subject or pivot (the highest-ranked syntactic argument position).
>>> Demotion is then an operation that blocks this default assignment.
>>> In your example, the highest-ranked role is the experiencer, and it
>>> is assigned to the syntactic subject, so there’s no passive
>>> construction involved by my definition.
>>>
>>> Via this definition of ‘demotion’, which involves a mix of semantic
>>> and syntactic properties (it is a form-meaning mapping property),
>>> the definition of ‘passive’ acquires enough syntactic anchoring to
>>> clearly target ‘strategies’, as opposed to mere meanings, while
>>> still avoiding the apparent pitfalls of including a purely formal
>>> property such as verb-coding in the definition.
>>>
>>> Best — Juergen
>>>
>>> --
>>> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
>>> Professor, Department of Linguistics
>>> University at Buffalo
>>>
>>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
>>> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
>>> Phone: (716) 645 0127
>>> Fax: (716) 645 3825
>>> Email:jb77 at buffalo.edu
>>> Web:http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
>>> <http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/>
>>>
>>> Office hours will be held by Zoom. Email me to schedule a call at
>>> any time. I will in addition hold Tu/Th 4-5pm open specifically for
>>> remote office hours.
>>>
>>> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
>>> (Leonard Cohen)
>>>
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>>
>> --
>> Martin Haspelmath
>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>> Deutscher Platz 6
>> D-04103 Leipzig
>> https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
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Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
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