[Lingtyp] Double-marked passive

Mon Mar 22 18:59:12 UTC 2021

>From my perspective, the problem with a definition including "primarily
associated with the expression of" is that it would exclude non-dedicated
passives, i.e. polyfunctional morphemes one of whose function is passive,
but also used with other functions.

Guillaume

Le lun. 22 mars 2021 à 19:53, Chao Li <chao.li at aya.yale.edu> a écrit :

> Dear Martin,
>
>
>
> I agree that any definition of a comparative concept will likely result in
> the exclusion of some “legacy cases”. Given that you are using “passive” as
> a comparative concept in a very ambitious sense and given that you have all
> human languages in mind and would like to have a definition as clear and
> inclusive as possible, there is the question of the extent of the cases
> that will be excluded by the definition you referred to. To what extent are
> passives described in specific language grammars coded with an affix on the
> verb and to what extent are they not?  Does anyone on this list server have
> a more or less clear answer on this? Then as for the possibility of a
> definition of passive that might also cover cases like Mandarin, how about
> the replacement of a passive affix on the verb with a grammatical morpheme
> primarily associated with the expression of a passive meaning? Would that
> work?
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Chao
>
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 1:03 PM Martin Haspelmath <
> martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de> wrote:
>
>> Yes, comparative concepts cannot be right or wrong, but traditional terms
>> can be defined in a better or less good way. Note that the original
>> question by Ian Joo used the traditional term "passive", assuming that we
>> know what it means (not necessarily assuming that "passive" is a concept
>> that is useful for typological generalizations).
>>
>> Good definitions of traditional terms are (i) clear (i.e. based on clear
>> concepts) and (ii) largely coextensive with legacy usage.
>>
>> Traditional terms can rarely be defined clearly in such a way that the
>> definition covers ALL legacy cases. So while the Chinese *bèi *
>> construction is similar to the Swahili Passive, I don’t see that we can
>> have a definition of *passive* that covers both. Maybe even the English
>> Passive is not included.
>>
>> By contrast, I don’t see why Papuan Malay *dapa-pukul* shouldn’t be
>> included. Isn’t *dapa-* a passive prefix? (And similarly Riau Indonesian
>> *kena-pukul*.)
>>
>> Best,
>> Martin
>>
>> Am 22.03.21 um 12:25 schrieb David Gil:
>>
>> Martin,
>>
>> As you've pointed out on numerous occasions, comparative concepts can't
>> be right or wrong, they can only be more or less useful as tools for
>> typological generalizations.  Still, with that in mind, I suspect that a
>> comparative concept of "passive" that subsumes, say, the rather
>> garden-variety constructions in (1) and (2), rather than excluding them on
>> the grounds that the verb lacks an affix, as you would have things, will
>> turn out to be more useful for typologists (not to mention conforming more
>> closely with common every-day usage).
>>
>> (1) Riau Indonesian
>>     *Yusuf kena pukul sama Musa*
>>     Yusuf PASS hit together Musa
>>     'Yusuf got hit by Musa'
>>     [cf. "active" *Musa pukul Yusuf*]
>>
>> (1) Papuan Malay
>>     *Yusuf dapa pukul dari Musa*
>>     Yusuf PASS hit from Musa
>>     'Yusuf got hit by Musa'
>>     [cf. "active" *Musa pukul Yusuf*]
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> On 22/03/2021 08:24, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
>>
>> Yes, the definition that I use presupposes an understanding of
>> "verb-coded" and "adposition", but this is typical of definitions: They
>> work only if their component parts are defined or understood clearly.
>>
>> So is *bèi* a verb-coding element in (1) and (4)? It could be said to be
>> "verb-phrase coding" (as David notes), but the notion of "verb phrase" is
>> not cross-linguistically applicable in an obvious way. So I would restrict
>> "passive" (as a comparative concept) to forms where the verb has an affix
>> (because this is the only situation in which the two sister constructions
>> are clearly asymmetric). Now is *bèi* a prefix in (1)? This would be
>> possible only if *bèi* in (1) and *bèi* in (4) are two different
>> elements – and it seems that we do not want to say this.
>>
>> Chao rightly asks: "In what sense is the English passive construction
>> verb-coded?" The English Passive includes an Auxiliary, but there is no
>> good cross-linguistic definition of "auxiliary", so we don't want to say
>> that auxiliaries can be criterial for passives. Some English verbs have
>> what looks like a passive affix (e.g. *-en* in *tak-en*), but the
>> English Passive construction does not clearly fall under the definition
>> that I gave. (A good illustration of "passive" is Siewierska's first
>> example in her WALS chapter, from Swahili: *chakula kilipik-wa (na
>> Hamisi)* 'The food was cooked by Hamisi').
>>
>> There is a tradition of appealing to "tests for subject properties"
>> (going back to Keenan 1976), but this seems appropriate only at the
>> language-particular level. Since these tests are different in different
>> languages, this approach does not work well in a comparative context.
>>
>> Best,
>> Martin
>>
>> Am 21.03.21 um 20:28 schrieb David Gil:
>>
>> Chao, Martin,
>>
>> I agree with Chao's characterization of Mandarin (1) as being a passive
>> under most or all reasonable definitions thereof; however, I fail to see
>> why (4) cannot also be considered to be a passive.  In (4), *bèi* is not
>> flagging *jĭngchá* 'police' but rather is marking the entire phrase *jĭngchá
>> tuō-zŏu-le* — it may thus be analyzed as an instance of "verb(-phrase)
>> coding".
>>
>> Many Southeast Asian languages have paradigms which correspond to that in
>> (1) - (4) except that, in the counterpart of (4), the agent phrase follows
>> rather than precedes the verb.  Such constructions are commonly referred to
>> as "passives", or, more specifically, as "periphrastic" or sometimes
>> "adversative passives".  Moreover, in such languages, the counterpart of
>> Mandarin *bèi* is presumably also applying to the verb-plus-agent phrase
>> as a whole.  So the only obvious difference between such constructions and
>> Mandarin (4) is that of word order.  (I say "*obvious* difference" because
>> it may be the case that syntactic tests will show that *jĭngchá* in (4)
>> has more subject properties than do the usual Southeast Asian postverbal
>> agent phrases, in which case the prototypicality of (4) as a passive would
>> decrease accordingly.  But has anybody shown this to be the case?)
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> On 21/03/2021 19:31, Chao Li wrote:
>>
>> Dear Martin,
>>
>>
>>
>> It perhaps depends on what you mean by “verb-coded”. For example, in what
>> sense is the English passive construction verb-coded? In a Mandarin
>> sentence like (1), the meaning is passive and crucially it is coded with
>> the passive morpheme *bèi*, which historically could be used as a verb
>> that means “to suffer”. The single argument in (1) can also correspond to
>> the Patient argument of an active sentence like (2) or (3). Moreover, it
>> can be said that the Agent argument gets suppressed in (1). Therefore, it
>> appears reasonable to analyze (1) as a passive construction both
>> Chinese-internally and crosslinguistically. As for whether a  *bèi*-construction
>> like (4) can be analyzed as a passive construction that fits the
>> definition, such an analysis is possible if one accepts the (controversial
>> and debatable) assumption that *bèi* in (4) assumes not only its primary
>> role of being a passive marker but also an additional role of being a
>> preposition.
>>
>>
>> [image: image.png]
>>
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Chao
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 21, 2021 at 10:07 AM Martin Haspelmath <
>> martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de> wrote:
>>
>>> According to my favourite definition of "passive construction", these
>>> Mandarin examples are (apparently) not passive constructions:
>>>
>>> "A passive voice construction is a verb-coded valency construction (i)
>>> whose sister valency construction is transitive and not verb-coded, and
>>> (ii) which has an S-argument corresponding to the transitive P, and (iii)
>>> which has a suppressed or oblique-flagged argument corresponding to the
>>> transitive A".
>>>
>>> According to this definition, a passive construction "marks both the
>>> agent and the verb" (unless the agent is suppressed or otherwise absent).
>>> But Ian Joo's question was probably about languages where the SAME marker
>>> can occur on the verb and on the oblique agent. This would be very unusual,
>>> because passive voice markers are not expected to be similar to an oblique
>>> agent flag.
>>>
>>> Now my question is: Are these Mandarin (and Shanghainese)
>>> BEI/GEI-constructions passives? They have traditionally been called
>>> passives, but since the BEI element is obligatory, while the agent can be
>>> omitted (*Zhangsan bei (Lisi) da le* 'Zhangsan was hit (by Lisi)'), it
>>> cannot be a preposition or case prefix. At least that would seem to follow
>>> from the definition of "affix/adposition". So I think this construction
>>> doesn't fall under a rigorous definition of "passive construction".
>>> (Rather, it is a sui generis construction.)
>>>
>>> Some authors might say that it is a "noncanonical passive" (cf. Legate,
>>> Julie Anne. 2021. Noncanonical passives: A typology of voices in an
>>> impoverished Universal Grammar. *Annual Review of Linguistics* 7(1).
>>> doi:10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031920-114459
>>> <https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031920-114459>), but there
>>> does not seem to be a clear limit to this vague notion (is every
>>> topicalization construction a noncanonical passive?). I do not know of a
>>> fully explicit definition of "passive construction" that clearly includes
>>> the Mandarin BEI constructions.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> Am 28.02.21 um 19:46 schrieb bingfu Lu:
>>>
>>> A better example in Mandarin may be:
>>> Zhangsan bei-Lisi      gei-da-le.
>>> Zhangsan PASS-Lisi  PASS-hit-PRF
>>> `Zhangsan was hit by Lisi.'
>>>
>>> 'bei' is etymologically related to 'suffer' while‘给’ to 'give'.
>>>
>>> In fact,
>>> Zhangsan bei-(Lisi)      da-le.
>>> can also change to
>>> Zhangsan gei-(Lisi）      da-le.
>>>
>>> Furthermore, in Shanghainese, the PASS is a morpheme homophonic to the
>>> morpheme for 'give'.
>>>
>>> regards,
>>> Bingfu Lu
>>> Beijing Language University
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, February 28, 2021, 10:26:36 PM GMT+8, JOO, Ian [Student]
>>> <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear typologists,
>>>
>>> I wonder if you are aware of any language whose passive construction
>>> marks both the agent and the verb.
>>> For example, in Mandarin, the agent receives the passive marker *bei.*
>>>
>>> (1) Zhangsan bei-Lisi da-le.
>>> Zhangsan PASS-Lisi hit-PRF
>>> `Zhangsan was hit by Lisi.'
>>>
>>> When the agent is omitted, the verb receives *bei*.
>>>
>>> (2) Zhangsan bei-da-le.
>>> Zhangsan PASS-hit-PRF
>>> `Zhangsan was hit.'
>>>
>>> But, in some occasions, both the agent and the verb receive *bei*:
>>>
>>> (3) Zhangsan bei-Lisi bei-da-le.
>>> Zhangsan PASS-Lisi PASS-hit-PRF
>>> `Zhangsan was hit by Lisi.'
>>>
>>> Are you aware of any other language where a construction like (3) is
>>> possible?
>>> The only one I am aware of at the moment is Vietnamese.
>>> I would greatly appreciate any help.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Ian
>>>
>>>
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>>
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>> --
>> David Gil
>>
>> Senior Scientist (Associate)
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>>
>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Martin Haspelmath
>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>> Deutscher Platz 6
>> D-04103 Leipzighttps://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>> --
>> David Gil
>>
>> Senior Scientist (Associate)
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>>
>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>>
>>
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>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>>
>> --
>> Martin Haspelmath
>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>> Deutscher Platz 6
>> D-04103 Leipzighttps://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Guillaume Jacques

Directeur de recherches
CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO - EHESS
http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques
http://panchr.hypotheses.org/
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