[Lingtyp] Double-marked passive
David Gil
gil at shh.mpg.de
Mon Mar 22 11:25:54 UTC 2021
Martin,
As you've pointed out on numerous occasions, comparative concepts can't
be right or wrong, they can only be more or less useful as tools for
typological generalizations. Still, with that in mind, I suspect that a
comparative concept of "passive" that subsumes, say, the rather
garden-variety constructions in (1) and (2), rather than excluding them
on the grounds that the verb lacks an affix, as you would have things,
will turn out to be more useful for typologists (not to mention
conforming more closely with common every-day usage).
(1) Riau Indonesian
/Yusuf kena pukul sama Musa/
Yusuf PASS hit together Musa
'Yusuf got hit by Musa'
[cf. "active" /Musa pukul Yusuf/]
(1) Papuan Malay
/Yusuf dapa pukul dari Musa/
Yusuf PASS hit from Musa
'Yusuf got hit by Musa'
[cf. "active" /Musa pukul Yusuf/]
David
On 22/03/2021 08:24, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
> Yes, the definition that I use presupposes an understanding of
> "verb-coded" and "adposition", but this is typical of definitions:
> They work only if their component parts are defined or understood
> clearly.
>
> So is /bèi/ a verb-coding element in (1) and (4)? It could be said to
> be "verb-phrase coding" (as David notes), but the notion of "verb
> phrase" is not cross-linguistically applicable in an obvious way. So I
> would restrict "passive" (as a comparative concept) to forms where the
> verb has an affix (because this is the only situation in which the two
> sister constructions are clearly asymmetric). Now is /bèi/ a prefix in
> (1)? This would be possible only if /bèi/ in (1) and /bèi/ in (4) are
> two different elements – and it seems that we do not want to say this.
>
> Chao rightly asks: "In what sense is the English passive construction
> verb-coded?" The English Passive includes an Auxiliary, but there is
> no good cross-linguistic definition of "auxiliary", so we don't want
> to say that auxiliaries can be criterial for passives. Some English
> verbs have what looks like a passive affix (e.g. /-en/ in /tak-en/),
> but the English Passive construction does not clearly fall under the
> definition that I gave. (A good illustration of "passive" is
> Siewierska's first example in her WALS chapter, from Swahili: /chakula
> kilipik-*wa* (na Hamisi)/ 'The food was cooked by Hamisi').
>
> There is a tradition of appealing to "tests for subject properties"
> (going back to Keenan 1976), but this seems appropriate only at the
> language-particular level. Since these tests are different in
> different languages, this approach does not work well in a comparative
> context.
>
> Best,
> Martin
>
> Am 21.03.21 um 20:28 schrieb David Gil:
>>
>> Chao, Martin,
>>
>> I agree with Chao's characterization of Mandarin (1) as being a
>> passive under most or all reasonable definitions thereof; however, I
>> fail to see why (4) cannot also be considered to be a passive. In
>> (4), /bèi/ is not flagging /jĭngchá/ 'police' but rather is marking
>> the entire phrase /jĭngchá tuō-zŏu-le/ — it may thus be analyzed as
>> an instance of "verb(-phrase) coding".
>>
>> Many Southeast Asian languages have paradigms which correspond to
>> that in (1) - (4) except that, in the counterpart of (4), the agent
>> phrase follows rather than precedes the verb. Such constructions are
>> commonly referred to as "passives", or, more specifically, as
>> "periphrastic" or sometimes "adversative passives". Moreover, in
>> such languages, the counterpart of Mandarin /bèi/ is presumably also
>> applying to the verb-plus-agent phrase as a whole. So the only
>> obvious difference between such constructions and Mandarin (4) is
>> that of word order. (I say "*obvious* difference" because it may be
>> the case that syntactic tests will show that /jĭngchá/ in (4) has
>> more subject properties than do the usual Southeast Asian postverbal
>> agent phrases, in which case the prototypicality of (4) as a passive
>> would decrease accordingly. But has anybody shown this to be the case?)
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> On 21/03/2021 19:31, Chao Li wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Martin,
>>>
>>> It perhaps depends on what you mean by “verb-coded”. For example, in
>>> what sense is the English passive construction verb-coded? In a
>>> Mandarin sentence like (1), the meaning is passive and crucially it
>>> is coded with the passive morpheme /bèi/, which historically could
>>> be used as a verb that means “to suffer”. The single argument in (1)
>>> can also correspond to the Patient argument of an active sentence
>>> like (2) or (3). Moreover, it can be said that the Agent argument
>>> gets suppressed in (1). Therefore, it appears reasonable to analyze
>>> (1) as a passive construction both Chinese-internally and
>>> crosslinguistically. As for whether a /bèi/-construction like (4)
>>> can be analyzed as a passive construction that fits the definition,
>>> such an analysis is possible if one accepts the (controversial and
>>> debatable) assumption that /bèi/ in (4) assumes not only its primary
>>> role of being a passive marker but also an additional role of being
>>> a preposition.
>>>
>>> image.png
>>>
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Chao
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 21, 2021 at 10:07 AM Martin Haspelmath
>>> <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de <mailto:martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> According to my favourite definition of "passive construction",
>>> these Mandarin examples are (apparently) not passive constructions:
>>>
>>> "A passive voice construction is a verb-coded valency
>>> construction (i) whose sister valency construction is transitive
>>> and not verb-coded, and (ii) which has an S-argument
>>> corresponding to the transitive P, and (iii) which has a
>>> suppressed or oblique-flagged argument corresponding to the
>>> transitive A".
>>>
>>> According to this definition, a passive construction "marks both
>>> the agent and the verb" (unless the agent is suppressed or
>>> otherwise absent). But Ian Joo's question was probably about
>>> languages where the SAME marker can occur on the verb and on the
>>> oblique agent. This would be very unusual, because passive voice
>>> markers are not expected to be similar to an oblique agent flag.
>>>
>>> Now my question is: Are these Mandarin (and Shanghainese)
>>> BEI/GEI-constructions passives? They have traditionally been
>>> called passives, but since the BEI element is obligatory, while
>>> the agent can be omitted (/Zhangsan bei (Lisi) da le/ 'Zhangsan
>>> was hit (by Lisi)'), it cannot be a preposition or case prefix.
>>> At least that would seem to follow from the definition of
>>> "affix/adposition". So I think this construction doesn't fall
>>> under a rigorous definition of "passive construction". (Rather,
>>> it is a sui generis construction.)
>>>
>>> Some authors might say that it is a "noncanonical passive" (cf.
>>> Legate, Julie Anne. 2021. Noncanonical passives: A typology of
>>> voices in an impoverished Universal Grammar. /Annual Review of
>>> Linguistics/ 7(1). doi:10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031920-114459
>>> <https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031920-114459>),
>>> but there does not seem to be a clear limit to this vague notion
>>> (is every topicalization construction a noncanonical passive?).
>>> I do not know of a fully explicit definition of "passive
>>> construction" that clearly includes the Mandarin BEI constructions.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> Am 28.02.21 um 19:46 schrieb bingfu Lu:
>>>> A better example in Mandarin may be:
>>>> Zhangsan bei-Lisi gei-da-le.
>>>> Zhangsan PASS-Lisi PASS-hit-PRF
>>>> `Zhangsan was hit by Lisi.'
>>>>
>>>> 'bei' is etymologically related to 'suffer' while‘给’ to 'give'.
>>>>
>>>> In fact,
>>>> Zhangsan bei-(Lisi) da-le.
>>>> can also change to
>>>> Zhangsan gei-(Lisi） da-le.
>>>>
>>>> Furthermore, in Shanghainese, the PASS is a morpheme homophonic
>>>> to the morpheme for 'give'.
>>>>
>>>> regards,
>>>> Bingfu Lu
>>>> Beijing Language University
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sunday, February 28, 2021, 10:26:36 PM GMT+8, JOO, Ian
>>>> [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>
>>>> <mailto:ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dear typologists,
>>>>
>>>> I wonder if you are aware of any language whose passive
>>>> construction marks both the agent and the verb.
>>>> For example, in Mandarin, the agent receives the passive marker
>>>> /bei./
>>>>
>>>> (1) Zhangsan bei-Lisi da-le.
>>>> Zhangsan PASS-Lisi hit-PRF
>>>> `Zhangsan was hit by Lisi.'
>>>>
>>>> When the agent is omitted, the verb receives /bei/.
>>>>
>>>> (2) Zhangsan bei-da-le.
>>>> Zhangsan PASS-hit-PRF
>>>> `Zhangsan was hit.'
>>>>
>>>> But, in some occasions, both the agent and the verb receive /bei/:
>>>>
>>>> (3) Zhangsan bei-Lisi bei-da-le.
>>>> Zhangsan PASS-Lisi PASS-hit-PRF
>>>> `Zhangsan was hit by Lisi.'
>>>>
>>>> Are you aware of any other language where a construction like
>>>> (3) is possible?
>>>> The only one I am aware of at the moment is Vietnamese.
>>>> I would greatly appreciate any help.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Ian
>>>>
>>>>
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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 <https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522>
>>>
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>> --
>> David Gil
>>
>> Senior Scientist (Associate)
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>>
>> Email:gil at shh.mpg.de
>> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>>
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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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--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
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