a challenging passive in Persian

[George Aaron Broadwell]

Dear Fatemah,

These examples look like what is sometimes called a 'non-promotional'
passive.  (I believe the term is originally due to T. Givon. )  These are
passives where the Actor is suppressed, but the Undergoer still shows signs
of being an object.

The correct analysis of the Spanish impersonal passive is controversial, but
on one view, we have a situation similar to the Persian in examples like the
following:

Active:
El curó a los niños.              'He cured the children.'
he cured to the children

Impersonal Passive:
Se curó a los niños.           'The children were cured.'
pass cured to the children

The "a" is a differential object marker which appears before a specific
human object.  So that seems to argue that "a los niños" is still the object
of the sentence.

(Others more familiar with the right analysis of Spanish, please jump in!)

I believe that there is a similar impersonal passive in Irish, which might
be worth investigating.

Aaron Broadwell

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Fatemeh Nemati <fatemene at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> First of all, I want to thank George Aaron Broadwell and Andrew
> Koontz-Garboden for their kind feedback regarding my inquiry on passive vs.
> inchoative constructions.
> Now my second inquiry on passives in Persian:
> I have come across a kind of passive construction in Persian that involves
> Indirect Objects and want to know if you have come across this phenomenon
> (given that the existence of passive constructions in Persian is questioned
> by some researches (Moyne 1974, Vahedi-Langrudi)).
> In canonical type of passive, the agent with the grammatical function
> subject gets suppressed and the patient functioning as the direct object is
> linked to the the Subject function. This type is attested and described in
> Persian, as in many other languages (1-2). What is interesting is that
> passivization applies to structures lacking a direct object. These sentences
> in both active and passive voice are of the configuration illustrated in
> (3-4).
>
> 1.ACTIVE
> SUBJ   OBJ      V
> *sina *    *xane-i*    *saxt*.
> Sina     house-a built
> Sina built a house.
>
>
> 2. PASSIVE
> SUBJ     V
> *xane-i*    *saxte Sod*
> house-a  built  become
> A house was built.
>
>
> 3. ACTIVE:
> SUBJ                IO           V
> *doSman*         *be anha*      hamle kard
> enemy           to they       attack did
>
> The enemy attacked them.
>
> 4. PASSIVE
> IO          V
> *be anha* *hamle Sod*
> to they  attack become
> They were attacked.
>
> As it can be observed, the agent is suppressed, but as for the Indirect
> Object functioning as the subject, one can not claim such a thing, because
> according to the grammar of Persian, a propositional phrase can not function
> as a subject. A fact about Persian is that it is a pro-drop language, but
> positing the existence of a small "pro" in the place of the Subject would
> not be a solution because it ends up in violating the coherence condition,
> as there will be an extra function which is not designated by the passive
> verb. As for agreement on the verb, the verb takes an unmarked third person
> agreement; it does not show agreement with the pronoun contained in the IO,
> which is the affected entity from a semantic point of view.  I am curious to
> know if there is any other language that shows these properties where a
> sentence containing an Indirect Object is passivized, the subject is
> suppressed, the indirect object remains intact and finally in ends up in a
> subject-less sentence.
> The construction, however, is different from impersonal constructions which
> are similar to passives. Persian impersonals have a pronoun as the subject
> which is referentially non-specific.
>
> All the best,
> Fatemeh
>



-- 
George Aaron Broadwell
Dept of Anthropology
UAlbany SUNY | Albany NY 12222
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