Passives from Experiencer verbs

[Paul Hopper]

It is worth bearing in mind that the French construction se voir + INF 
noted by Frederico Meinberg that started this thread has an infinitive, not 
a ppp. So we have neither a copula nor a passive participle. Which raises 
the question of why we are calling it a passive, other than the fact that 
the closest English translation equivalent is with a passive.

Regarding Dan's observation that we would expect the subject to have 
actually experienced the event in question, there was that French example 
from Glanville Price's book that I cited in which the subject is explicitly 
said to have died, and so could not have witnessed the event: "André Blanc, 
qui fut, jusqu'à sa mort en 1966, l'un des animateurs de l'architecture en 
France, se voit rendre un hommage tardif au Musée des Arts Décoratifs" 
(Price p. 236). So it seems that in French at least the construction does 
not require its subject to be an experiencer.

Paul

--On Tuesday, December 9, 2003 1:54 AM +0000 Stefan Knoob 
<stefanknoob at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> Two things could be added to the discussion, linking in also with Suzanne
> Kemmers and Daniel Everetts observations 1. It strikes me as interesting
> that the British English "see oneself PPP" (and the equivalent German
> sich PPP sehen) are not actually simple passive-like constructions but
> have irrealis modality/aspectuality. That is "She sees/saw herself
> elected (already)" refers to a prospective rather than a past or
> completed event, and "see" expresses this prospective vision. And, in a
> way the verb 'see' in this use of 'see oneself' is less than completely
> passive, rather somewhere intermediate on the agentivity cline across
> "{is +| finds oneself | sees oneself | imagines oneself | gets oneself |
> has one's [body part]} PPP ". It certainly is not a straightforward
> paraphrase.  2. One language in which experiencer verbs play a major role
> in non-active verb formation is Korean. There, the periphrastic verb
> class, common in the Sino-Korean and Loanword part of the lexicon, and of
> the form (EVENT-)NOUN + (FUNCTION) VERB, has paradigms in which
> experiential and semi-experiential verbs signify the inactive patientive
> ("passive") voice. (By the way, this analysis is rather controversial,
> with many speaking of 'passive-like expressions' but most rejecting an
> analysis as a  straightforward "passive" or somesuch.)  Anyway, examples
> are
> [yok+po-] 'humiliation+sees = gets.humiliated'
>           vs. [yok+poi-] 'humiliation+shows = humiliates'
> [cansoli+tuL-] 'cold.words+hears = gets.told.off.coldly'
>           vs [cansoli+ha-] 'cold.words+does/PROV =
> complains.coldly/tells.off.coldly  [yatan+mac-] 'scolding+gets.exposed.to
> = gets a scolding'
>           vs [yatan+chi-] 'scolding+hits/does.vehemently/PROV = scolds'
> [chingchan+{tuL-|pat-}] 'flattery+{hears|receives} = gets flattered'
>           vs [chingchan+ha-] 'flattery+does/PROV
> The Korean case, by the way, throws a new light on Suzanne Kemmers
> observation that:
>> The passive meaning Alan noticed basically comes from the past
>> participle.  The V + REFL part is essentially a  quasi-paraphrase of
>> 'be' but with subject reflecting on the >experience stated in the
>> complement.
> Certainly in the Korean case (which has no PPP or equivalent), the
> passive-like patientive meaning is clearly brought in by the experiencer
> (or other inactive/patientive) verb only. At the same time, the choice of
> verb is situation-specific to the actual type of experience, concrete or
> metaphorical: Situations one confronts are seen, Interpersonal Verbal
> Actions are heard, Aggressions and Violence one is exposed to like to the
> elements, and Interpersonal Social Actions are received.  Thus, while the
> PPP of the English construction clearly reflects and contributes to its
> passive meaning, Korean shows that the verb is likely contributing too.
>
> Stefan Knoob, London, School of Oriental and African Studies
>
> __________________________________________________
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---------------------------
Paul Hopper
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
Department of English
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Telephone (412) 268-7174
Fax (412) 268-7989