[Lingtyp] passive and tense

Sat Nov 9 18:04:39 UTC 2019

Dear Sergey et al. — In the developmental literature, there’s been much discussion of the following statistical patterns, supported by data from studies going back to the 1970s:

telic descriptions ~ past-time reference
atelic descriptions ~ non-past-time reference

In Bohnemeyer & Swift (2004: 291-293), we argue that these correlations may be mediated by viewpoint aspect:

telic descriptions ~ perfective aspect ~ past-time reference
atelic descriptions ~ imperfective aspect ~ non-past-time reference

We offer a Gricean account of the first part of these, the telicity-aspect patterns.

Now for several reasons, it also seems very plausible that passives would be more frequent with telic descriptions than with atelic ones. Mostly because passives would seem to tend to occur with topical, and thus predominantly (semantically) definite, themes.

(If any LingTypers are aware of adult language corpus data backing any of the above correlations up - or not! - I’d be grateful for references.)

Best — Juergen

Bohnemeyer, J. & M. D. Swift. (2004). Event realization and default aspect. Linguistics & Philosophy 27(3): 263-296.

> On Nov 9, 2019, at 12:36 PM, Sergey Lyosov <sergelyosov at inbox.ru> wrote:
> 
> Dear Ksenia,
>  
> thank you very much for the reference!
>  
> Sure, passive participles are often perfective, while A/S participles are cursive/imperfective/habitual. This is the case for most (perhaps all) Semitic languages.
>  
> Best wishes,
>  
> Sergey 
>  
> Пятница, 8 ноября 2019, 23:39 +02:00 от Ksenia Shagal <ksenia.shagal at gmail.com>:
>  
> Quite in line with Martin's work (1994), I discussed this (to a certain extent) in relation to asymmetry in participial systems. Participles specializing in S/A relativization (active) often refer to habitual events, while participles specializing in P(/S) relativization (passive or "absolutive") are mostly perfective or resultative. This seems relevant, since participles are a well-known source of ergativity in independent clauses, and in some languages they are involved in the formation of passive constructions. This topic is touched upon in sections 3.3.5, 7.2.1 and 7.5.2 of both the dissertation and the book:
>  
> Shagal, Ksenia. 2017. Towards a typology of participles. Helsinki: University of Helsinki doctoral dissertation. (https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/177418/Towardsa.pdf)
> Shagal, Ksenia. 2019. Participles: A typological study. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
>  
> Best wishes,
> Ksenia
>  
> On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 9:13 PM Peter Arkadiev <peterarkadiev at yandex.ru> wrote:
> I'm wondering why I haven't got Sergey's original message... And this is not the first time I only see the replies to a posting on this list without receiving the original.
> To Sergey's question, Emma Geniušienė reports that in the Lithuanian texts she has analysed, the passive is more than two times more frequently used in the *present* tense than in the past, see "Passive Constructions in Lithuanian" (Benjamins, 2016), p. 141.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Peter
> 
> -- 
> Peter Arkadiev, PhD
> Institute of Slavic Studies
> Russian Academy of Sciences
> Leninsky prospekt 32-A 119991 Moscow
> peterarkadiev at yandex.ru
> http://inslav.ru/people/arkadev-petr-mihaylovich-peter-arkadiev
> 
> 
> 
> 08.11.2019, 20:33, "Haspelmath, Martin" <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>:
> > Yes, I found this discussed by Comrie in 1981, and discussed it myself in 1994:
> >
> > Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Aspect and voice: Some reflections on perfect and passive. In Philip J. Tedeschi & Annie Zaenen (eds.), Tense and aspect (Syntax and Semantics 14), 65–78. New York: Academic Press.
> > Haspelmath, Martin. 1994. Passive participles across languages. In Barbara Fox & Paul J. Hopper (eds.), Voice: Form and function (Typological Studies in Language), 151–177. Amsterdam: Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tsl.27.08has. (https://zenodo.org/record/227097)
> >
> > But there must be more recent work about this as well.
> >
> > Best,
> > Martin
> >
> > On 08.11.19 18:19, Sergey Lyosov wrote:
> >>  Dear colleagues
> >>
> >> Working with corpora of certain Semitic languages, I noticed that passive verb forms are much more frequent in the past tenses than in present and future tenses. This is also my impression of various languages with which I am familiar but have not studied their verbal systems. Does such cross-linguistic feature exist? If yes, how do we explain it?
> >>
> >> Best wishes,
> >>
> >> Sergey
> >
> > -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de) Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Kahlaische Strasse 10 D-07745 Jena   & Leipzig University Institut fuer Anglistik IPF 141199 D-04081 Leipzig
> > ,
> >
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>  
> --
> Sergey Lyosov
>  
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