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<div dir="auto">The term commonly used in the Australianist literature is "maleficiary" (cf. beneficiary).</div>

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<div dir="auto">Peter Austin</div>

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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>

<b>Sent:</b> Friday, June 28, 2024 6:04:03 PM<br>

<b>To:</b> LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>

<b>Subject:</b> [Lingtyp] agent-like entities in anticausative constructions</font>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Dear colleagues,</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In my field material on Modern Western Aramaic, a moribund language still spoken in the Syrian Antilebanon mountains, I often come across clauses like this one:</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Mácana ḥarb̥aṯ ʕimm.

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The machine broke down on me</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The verb ḥarb̥aṯ is anti-causative, the ʕimm prepositional phrase ‘on me’ (lit. ‘with me’) refers to the participant via whose involuntary involvement the action took place.

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> Another similar example:</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">‘Hanna finžōna ičber!?!’ ‘Iskaṭ

<span style="background:fuchsia">ʕimm</span> ana ŭ ʕa-nmažǝlya’.</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">‘This glass is broken!?’ ‘It fell

<span style="background:fuchsia">on me</span> while I was washing it’.</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The preposition ʕimm, here ‘on me’, does not imply that the glass fell onto the speaker but rather that it fell through some fault of its own.</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Nonetheless, with real passives this ʕimm is purely associative and cannot be used to introduce the agent, as illustrated by the sentence

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">inəkṭal Žaržūra

<span style="background:fuchsia">ʕimməl</span>‿Ḥasan,</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> which can only be interpreted as

</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">‘Žaržūra was killed (together)

<span style="background:fuchsia">with</span> Ḥasan’ rather than </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">‘Žaržūra was killed

<span style="background:fuchsia">by</span> Ḥasan’.</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">How do we describe this participant in an anti-causative verb phrase?</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Thank you very much!</span></p>

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<span style="font-size:12pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Sergey</span></p>

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