<div dir="ltr"><div>Martin,</div><div><br></div><div>Just following up on two points:</div><div><br></div><div>1. "I'm not sure about the notion of an "isolating" language" -- I didn't mean to imply this as a clear-cut category, but certainly there are languages with more or less inflection, and it seems odd to me to attach the idea of passivization to that amount of morphology. There are many languages (loosely called "isolating") that do not have passive morphology but that do have functional equivalents with multi-verb constructions. Further, if you insist on these being "ergative" constructions, then why not just call the "passive" affix an "ergative" [or should that be "absolutivizing"?] affix? Why is passivization needed as a comparative concept, if it turns out to be such a niche category?</div><div><br></div><div>2. I don't think it is any easier to define "affix" vs. "word" than it is to define "verb phrase" in a relevant sense. Wordhood is notoriously difficult, whereas scope-based (and other) tests for phrases associated with the verb seem to be a more principled way to determine what is "associated with the verb" than whether linguists have written hyphens instead of spaces in glosses. David's response makes this very clear. It seems completely the wrong direction to say that the resolution of the debate about wordhood/affixhood of those forms in Indonesian should then determine whether or not the constructions as "passives" are not. They are passives (or not) based on functional grounds, and independently we can ask whether those passives are coded morphologically.<br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 2:18 PM David Gil <<a href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Martin,</p>
<p>Your suggestion that Papuan Malay <i>dapa</i> and Riau
Indonesian <i>kena</i> are prefixes surprises me for two
independent reasons, principled and language-specific: (a) on
principled grounds because I know you don't attach much weight to
the distinction between affixes and other "larger" elements, and
(b) on language-specific grounds because <i>dapa</i> and <i>kena</i>
behave like complete and separate words rather than affixes with
respect to just about any language-specific criterion you can
think of: they are disyllabic, they exhibit an array of
phonological properties associated with a complete phonological
foot, they can occur in isolation as complete non-elliptical
sentences, they are content words associated with particular
meanings, roughly 'get' and 'undergo' respectively, and so forth.
Calling them affixes makes no sense either emically, in terms of
language-specific analyses, or etically, in terms of comparative
concepts.</p>
<p>David</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div>On 22/03/2021 15:16, Martin Haspelmath
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
Yes, comparative concepts cannot be right or wrong, but
traditional terms can be defined in a better or less good way.
Note that the original question by Ian Joo used the traditional
term "passive", assuming that we know what it means (not
necessarily assuming that "passive" is a concept that is useful
for typological generalizations).<br>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Good definitions of traditional terms are (i) clear (i.e.
based on clear concepts) and (ii) largely coextensive with
legacy usage. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Traditional terms can rarely be defined clearly in such a way
that the definition covers ALL legacy cases. So while the
Chinese <i>bèi </i> construction is similar to the Swahili
Passive, I don’t see that we can have a definition of <i>passive</i>
that covers both. Maybe even the English Passive is not
included. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>By contrast, I don’t see why Papuan Malay <i>dapa-pukul</i>
shouldn’t be included. Isn’t <i>dapa-</i> a passive prefix?
(And similarly Riau Indonesian <i>kena-pukul</i>.)<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best,</div>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div>Am 22.03.21 um 12:25 schrieb David
Gil:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p>Martin,</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>(1) Riau Indonesian<br>
<i>Yusuf kena pukul sama Musa</i><br>
Yusuf PASS hit together Musa<br>
'Yusuf got hit by Musa'<br>
[cf. "active" <i>Musa pukul Yusuf</i>]</p>
<p>(1) Papuan Malay<br>
<i>Yusuf dapa pukul dari Musa</i><br>
Yusuf PASS hit from Musa<br>
'Yusuf got hit by Musa'<br>
[cf. "active" <i>Musa pukul Yusuf</i>]</p>
<p>David</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div>On 22/03/2021 08:24, Martin
Haspelmath wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
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. <br>
<br>
So is <i>bèi</i> 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 <i>bèi</i>
a prefix in (1)? This would be possible only if <i>bèi</i> in
(1) and <i>bèi</i> in (4) are two different elements – and it
seems that we do not want to say this.<br>
<br>
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. <i>-en</i> in <i>tak-en</i>), 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: <i>chakula kilipik-<b>wa</b> (na Hamisi)</i> 'The
food was cooked by Hamisi').<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div>Am 21.03.21 um 20:28 schrieb
David Gil:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p>Chao, Martin,<br>
<br>
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), <i>bèi</i> is not
flagging <i>jĭngchá</i> 'police' but rather is marking
the entire phrase <i>jĭngchá tuō-zŏu-le</i>
— it may thus be analyzed as an instance
of "verb(-phrase) coding". <br>
<br>
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 <i>bèi</i>
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 <i>jĭngchá</i> 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?)</p>
<p>David</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div>On 21/03/2021 19:31, Chao Li
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span>Dear Martin,</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> </span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span>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
<i>bèi</i>, 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 </span> <i>bèi</i><span>-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 <i>bèi</i> in (4) assumes not only its primary
role of being a passive marker but also an
additional role of being a preposition. </span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> </span></p>
<img src="cid:1785bcf2e57cb971f161" alt="image.png" width="412" height="253">
<p style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> </span><span> </span><br>
</p>
<p style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span>Best regards,</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span>Chao</span></p>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Mar 21, 2021
at 10:07 AM Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de" target="_blank">martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div> According to my favourite definition of "passive
construction", these Mandarin examples are
(apparently) not passive constructions:<br>
<br>
<font size="-1">"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".</font><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 (<i>Zhangsan bei (Lisi) da le</i>
'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.)<br>
<br>
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. <i>Annual Review of Linguistics</i>
7(1). doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031920-114459" target="_blank">10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031920-114459</a>),
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.<br>
<span title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1146%2Fannurev-linguistics-031920-114459&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Noncanonical%20passives%3A%20A%20typology%20of%20voices%20in%20an%20impoverished%20Universal%20Grammar&rft.jtitle=Annual%20Review%20of%20Linguistics&rft.volume=7&rft.issue=1&rft.aufirst=Julie%20Anne&rft.aulast=Legate&rft.au=Julie%20Anne%20Legate&rft.date=2021"></span><br>
Best wishes,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div>Am 28.02.21 um 19:46 schrieb bingfu Lu:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div dir="ltr">A
better example in Mandarin may be:</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<div><span>Zhangsan
bei-Lisi gei-da-le.</span><br>
<span>Zhangsan
PASS-Lisi PASS-hit-PRF</span><br>
<span>`Zhangsan
was hit by Lisi.'</span></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">'bei'
is etymologically related to 'suffer'
while‘给’ to 'give'.</div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">In
fact, </div>
<div dir="ltr"><span><span>Zhangsan
bei-(Lisi) da-le.</span></span><br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"><font face="Helvetica Neue,
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" color="#26282a">can also change to</font></div>
<div dir="ltr"><font face="Helvetica Neue,
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" color="#26282a"><span><span>Zhangsan
gei-(Lisi） da-le.</span></span><br>
</font></div>
<div dir="ltr"><font face="Helvetica Neue,
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" color="#26282a"><span><span><br>
</span></span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr"><font face="Helvetica Neue,
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" color="#26282a">Furthermore, in
Shanghainese, the PASS is a morpheme
homophonic to the morpheme for 'give'.</font></div>
<div dir="ltr"><font face="Helvetica Neue,
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" color="#26282a"><br>
</font></div>
<div dir="ltr">regards,<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">Bingfu
Lu</div>
<div dir="ltr">Beijing
Language University</div>
<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div id="gmail-m_-2883452611316940016gmail-m_-7067846232154779631ydp9b85d7ebyahoo_quoted_4775567649">
<div>
<div> On Sunday, February 28, 2021, 10:26:36
PM GMT+8, JOO, Ian [Student] <a href="mailto:ian.joo@connect.polyu.hk" target="_blank"><ian.joo@connect.polyu.hk></a>
wrote: </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div id="gmail-m_-2883452611316940016gmail-m_-7067846232154779631ydp9b85d7ebyiv9747170334">
<div>
<div>
<div>Dear typologists,<br>
<br>
I wonder if you are aware of any
language whose passive construction
marks both the agent and the verb.<br>
For example, in Mandarin, the agent
receives the passive marker <em>bei.</em><br>
<br>
(1) Zhangsan bei-Lisi da-le.<br>
Zhangsan PASS-Lisi hit-PRF<br>
`Zhangsan was hit by Lisi.'<br>
<br>
When the agent is omitted, the verb
receives <em>bei</em>.<br>
<br>
(2) Zhangsan bei-da-le.<br>
Zhangsan PASS-hit-PRF<br>
`Zhangsan was hit.'<br>
<br>
But, in some occasions, both the
agent and the verb receive <em>bei</em>:<br>
<br>
(3) Zhangsan bei-Lisi bei-da-le.<br>
Zhangsan PASS-Lisi PASS-hit-PRF<br>
`Zhangsan was hit by Lisi.'<br>
<br>
Are you aware of any other language
where a construction like (3) is
possible?<br>
The only one I am aware of at the
moment is Vietnamese.<br>
I would greatly appreciate any help.</div>
</div>
<div><br>
Regards,
<div>Ian</div>
</div>
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