passive/causative homonymy

[Paul Hopper]

English:

"Gwendoline had her necklace stolen"

1. ...during the break-in (Passive)
2. ...in order to defraud the insurance company (Causative)

(Cf David Gil's comment on English "get" also.)

- Paul Hopper




On Fri, September 16, 2011 16:26, Silvia Luraghi wrote:
> Dear Wolfgang,
> the Italian causative with 'fare' works in very much the same way as the
> Turkish causative
> described by Geoffrey. Look at the following sentence regarding a soccer
> match:
>
>
> ha      commesso un errore incredibile:     si e'       fatto rubare
> la   palla e     la Germania ha pareggiato. he-has committed a mistake
> terrible        refl he-is made steale(INF) the ball  and the Germany has
> drawn "he did a terrible mistake: he had the ball taken
> away and Germany drew the match"
>
> The two Manchu sentences you quote would sound like this in Italian
>
>
> 'On that day my eight horses were stolen (by
> bandits).' = Quel giorno mi (refl.1sg) sono fatto (caus) rubare otto
> cavalli (dai banditi)
>
> 'I let the horse drink (water).' = Ho fatto (caus) bere il cavallo'.
> (auxiliary change depends on the occurrence/non occurrence of a reflexive)
>
>
> Note further that the reflexive particles 'si'
> and 'mi in the Italian sentences are also used in external possession
> constructions.
>
> Best wishes
> Silvia
>
>
> At 16.13 16/09/2011, you wrote:
>
>
>> Dear Wolfgang,
>>
>>
>> It may be worth looking  a little more closely
>> the semantics of the ‘causatives’ you are investigating. Some
>> causatives are open to a ‘let, allow’ interpretation, while others
>> only permit the cause/coercion interpretation. In the former case,
>> “causers” can end up looking rather ‘unagentive’, and the
>> distance to a passive may not be as far as it would appear at first
>> glance.
>>
>> Â Turkish is a case in point: the causative
>> morpheme (with various allomorphs, some irregular) is open to both
>> ‘cause’, but also to ‘let happen, be unable to prevent’ readings.
>> Thus the causative verb kaç-ır-mak
>> (go away-caus-inf) can mean both ‘kidnap,
>> abduct (a person)’, or ‘miss (an opportunity, a train etc.)’.
>>
>> The following example (from Göksel and
>> Kerslake’s grammar (p.147), I have added
>> glosses) is quite similar semantically to your passive example with the
>> ‘bandits’:
>>
>>
>> Â
>> Sule el-i-ni makina-ya kap-tır-dı
>> Shule hand-poss3s-acc maschine-dat catch-caus-pst(3s)
>>
>>
>> 'Shule got her hand caught in the machine'
>>
>>
>> Â Of course here, the possessor of the affected
>> entity here winds up as the subject, while in your passive example it’s
>> a genitive attribute. But the semantic overlaps seem worthy of following
>> up.
>>
>> Best wishes
>> Geoff
>>
>>
>> Am 16.09.2011 13:24, schrieb Wolfgang Schulze:
>>
>>> Dear friends,
>>> I'm currently working on instances of
>>> passive/causative homonymy. Let me just give two examples from Manchu
>>> (Tungus) to illustrate the problem:
>>>
>>>
>>> Passive:
>>> tere         inenggi         mi-ni            jakûn
>>>     morin                hûlha-bu-fi
>>> that         day               1SG-GEN     eight Â
>>> Â Â Â  horse:NOMÂ  Â Â Â  steal-PASS-PFV:CNV
>>> 'On that day my eight horses were stolen (by bandits).'
>>>
>>>
>>> Causative:
>>> bi                morin    be        ule-bu-me
>>> 1SG:NOM   horse    ACC     drink-CAUS-IPFV:CNV
>>> 'I let the horse drink (water).'
>>>
>>>
>>> For -bu- marking the causative we might think
>>> of the verb bu- 'give' as a potential source of grammaticalization.
>>> However, it is far from
>>> being clear whether the same -bu- is present in the passive form.Â
>>> Usually, -bu- is said to
>>> represent a homonymous pair, not an instance of polysemy. However note
>>> that in some other Tungus languages, the formal merger of passive
>>> and causative may show up, too (apart from another, specialized passive
>>> morpheme). Similar instances occur in Korean (e.g.  cap-hita 'let/have
>>> catch, be caught', mul-lita 'have/let bite, be bitten' etc.). Again,
>>> grammars normally speak of secondary homonymy due to specific sound
>>> processes. Nevertheless, I'm not sure whether the parallel between
>>> (Southern)
>>> Tungus and Korean is mere coincidence (given
>>> the fact that the languages at issue are spoken in relative
>>> neighborhood). However, before trying to provide an explanation based
>>> on the assumption of the presence of polysemy (that would be rather
>>> complex in nature - I do not want to bother you with this here), I
>>> would be eager to learn whether there are other languages that exhibit
>>> the same type of homonymy, that is a single (!) strategy (morphological
>>> or analytic) to encode passives and causatives. Likewise, I'm totally
>>> ignorant whether this phenomenon has already been discussed in the
>>> literature (my fault, I admit!). So, I would be extremely thankful, if
>>>  you could tell me about helpful references and whether there are
>>> other languages  that show analogous strategies. Maybe Estonian is
>>> another candidate,  cf. soovi-ta 'be wished' ~ '*have something being
>>> wished' ~ '*have s.o. wish' > 'recommend', but I'm not sure whether I
>>> have got these data right.Â
>>>
>>> Very best wishes,
>>> WolfgangÂ
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
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>>
>> Silvia Luraghi
>> Dipartimento di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata
>> Università di Pavia
>> Strada Nuova 65
>> I-27100 Pavia
>> telef.: +39-0382-984685
>> fax: +39-0382-984487
>> silvia.luraghi at unipv.it
>> http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=68


-- 
Paul J. Hopper
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
and
Senior External Fellow
School of Linguistics and Literature
Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS)
Albertstr. 19
D-79105 Freiburg i.Br.
Germany