passive vs. inchoative

[Fatemeh Nemati]

Dear all,

How one can tell an inchoative verb  from a passive verb? I am not clear as
to how one can argue for the existence of passive constructions in a
language and how it can be distinguished from inchoative verbs and cases of
decausation. Some researchers on Persian claim that there is no passive in
Persian and they try to explain the cases of passivization (passive based on
my conclusion from the data claimed by the scholars to be passive in
English) by claiming that they are intransitive complex predicates: the
difference between passive/active is attributed to transitivity and they are
analyzed transitive/causative vs intransitive/inchoative:

1.rAmin   xAne    sAxt
   Ramin  house   built         Ramin built a house.   ==> Active,
transitive

2.xAne      sAxt-e                                    Sod
   house     built-Past.participle.suffix         became  The house was
built.
==> (passive which is claimed to be) intransitive, the past participle and
verb is as well claimed to make up the complex predicate, of  Adj+V
sequence.
This argument is said to be supported by the existence of complex predicates
with kardan/Sodan alternation:

3. AryA rAmin rA    majruh kard
Arya  Ramin OM wounded do  lit."Arya wounded Ramin." ==> active,  causative,
transitive complex predicate

4. Arya majruh Sod
Arya wounded became       lit. "Arya became wounded." ==> intransitive
complex predicate

 I regard 2 and 4 as cases of passivization, in which the agent argument
functioning as the subject is suppressed and theme argument now functions as
the Subject. The only difference between 2 and 4 is that in 2 there is a
morphological rule that changes the active verb to a passive by changing the
verb to its past participle and it is accompanied then with an inflected
form of Sod-an (the auxiliary used to make passives). In 4, the light verb
(kard) is simply substituted by the passive auxiliary "Sod-an".

Since the passive auxiliary also is homophonous and in some cases has an
overlap in meaning with the syntactic inchoative constructions Adj + Sod (5
below), passive constructions are all analyzed to be inchoative complex
predicates and when the light verb is "kard-an" in a complex predicate,
there is an inchoative/causative alternation. As such 3 and 4 will be
regarded as inchoative/causative alternation.

5. hava garm Sod
 weather hot  became    "The weather became hot" ==> inchoative with a
change of state meaning.

It follows then that all passive constructions are taken to signify a change
of state with the semantic head [BECOME].
Now my question is how to argue that transitivity and passivity are two
different notions (if they are) and how one can distinguish inchoatives from
passives.

I really appreciate your kind reply.

All the best,
Fatemeh
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lfg/attachments/20100819/5044e103/attachment.htm>