Antipassives without overt expression of O

[Antoine Guillaume]

Dear stefanie,

In Cavineña (Tacanan, Amazonian Bolivia) there is a productive reduplication
process that has a "patientless" antipassive effect when applied to a
transitive verb: the A of the underived verb becomes the S of the derived
verb, while the O "disappears" (it cannot be expressed anymore).

(1) Era      takure   ara-ya.
    1SG.ERG  chicken  eat-IMPFV
    'I am eating chicken.'

(2) Ara~ara-ya	ike.
    eat~eat-IMPFV	1SG.ABS
    'I am eating / having a meal.'

This is discussed in the following works:

Guillaume, A. 2008. A Grammar of Cavineña. MGL #44. Mouton de Gruyter. (pp.
278-282).

Guillaume, A., Forthcoming, "The interaction of reduplication with word
classes and transitivity in Cavineña", To appear in Reduplication in South
American Indian Languages, Goodwin Gómez, G. & van der Voort, H. (eds),
Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Brill.
(http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/Guillaume/articles_pdf/Guillaume_F
orthc_Cavinena_Reduplication_Brill.pdf)

Best regards,

Antoine Guillaume
Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage (DDL)
UMR 5596 (CNRS & Université Lumière Lyon 2)
Institut des Sciences de l'Homme
14 avenue Berthelot
69363 LYON Cedex 07
FRANCE
www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/Guillaume



>-----Message d'origine-----
>De : Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] De
>la part de Balthasar Bickel
>Envoyé : mercredi 21 décembre 2011 08:06
>À : LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>Objet : Re: Antipassives without overt expression of O
>
>Hi Stefanie
>
>An example from the Himalayas is discussed here:
>
>Bickel, B., M. Gaenszle, A. Rai, P. D. Rai, S. K. Rai, V. S. Rai, & N. P.
>Sharma (Gautam), 2007. Two ways of suspending object agreement in Puma:
>between incorporation, antipassivization, and optional agreement. Himalayan
>Linguistics 7, 1–18.
>
>Bickel, B., 2011. Multivariate typology and field linguistics: a case study
>on detransitivization in Kiranti (Sino-Tibetan). In Austin, P. K., O. Bond,
>D. Nathan, & L. Marten (eds.) Proceedings of Conference on Language
>Documentation and Linguistic Theory 3, 3–13. London: SOAS.
>
>All best,
>
>Balthasar
>
>On Dec 20, 2011, at 5:46 PM, Stefanie Fauconnier wrote:
>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> I am looking for examples of antipassive constructions where it is
>syntactically impossible to overtly express the original O argument as an
>oblique-marked adjunct.
>>
>> In the following example from Tzutujil, the transitive verb has
>antipassive marking. Normally, this verb takes an A and an O argument, but
>in this construction it appears that only the A can be mentioned (Dayley
>1985:346).
>>
>> Jaa7 ma xa ko7 nchapooni
>> 3SG  a lot     scolds/grabs.ANTIP
>> 'He scolds/grabs a lot'
>>
>> The reverse phenomenon appears to be well attested: it is not very
>difficult to find examples of passives that do not allow overt expression
>of the A. It is my impression that this is not the case for antipassives.
>In fact, Tzutujil is the only example I know of. Of course this impression
>might be wrong, so if anyone has other examples I would like to hear about
>them.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Stefanie Fauconnier
>> University of Leuven