[Lingtyp] Double-marked passive
Bohnemeyer, Juergen
jb77 at buffalo.edu
Mon Mar 22 20:12:40 UTC 2021
Dear all — I personally believe that it is good practice to avoid reference to coding properties as much as possible when defining comparative/etic category labels for “functional” expressions. In other words, I’m not convinced that it is necessary to appeal to verb-coding in a useful definition of ‘passive’, and my preference would be to try to avoid it. I would suggest the following alternative:
A passive is a construction that combines with a causative description and whose semantic impact is the demotion of the causer while retaining the causative meaning.
Note that this definition merely stipulates what a passive construction does to causative descriptions, but doesn’t actually require passives to be restricted to (lexical, morphological, or syntactic) causatives.
Now, obviously, this definition appeals more to semantics than Martin’s, which might a reason for many to people to prefer Martin’s. For my part, on balance, I’m more comfortable going relatively “bullish” on semantic diagnostics if that means I can avoid morphosyntactic cutoffs that might distort my typology.
Best — Juergen
> On Mar 22, 2021, at 9:16 AM, 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 bèiin (4) assumes not only its primary role of being a passive marker but also an additional role of being a preposition.
>>>>>
>>>>> <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), 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> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Disclaimer:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message and notify the sender and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (the University) immediately. Any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The University specifically denies any responsibility for the accuracy or quality of information obtained through University E-mail Facilities. Any views and opinions expressed are only those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the University and the University accepts no liability whatsoever for any losses or damages incurred or caused to any party as a result of the use of such information.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Martin Haspelmath
>>>>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>>>>> Deutscher Platz 6
>>>>> D-04103 Leipzig
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>>
>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>> http://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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>
>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>> --
>>> Martin Haspelmath
>>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>>> Deutscher Platz 6
>>> D-04103 Leipzig
>>>
>>> https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://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
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6
> D-04103 Leipzig
>
> https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
--
Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645 0127
Fax: (716) 645 3825
Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu
Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
Office hours will be held by Zoom. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu/Th 4-5pm open specifically for remote office hours.
There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
(Leonard Cohen)
More information about the Lingtyp
mailing list