[Lingtyp] Double-marked passive
William Croft
wcroft at unm.edu
Tue Mar 23 00:02:28 UTC 2021
Some comments on definitions of comparative concepts, terms chosen for comparative concepts, and the utility of comparative concepts.
Martin's favorite definition of "passive" is what I called a "derived structural definition" in my typology textbook (1990:16; 2003:18). Martin contrasts that with Givón's functional definition, which I compared to a derived structural definition in my textbook -- the original article of Givón's is from 1981. (This debate has been going on for a long time.)
I agree with Daniel that function should be kept separate from form. With respect to the types of comparative concept definitions debated here, I distinguish "constructions" and "strategies" (2016). Constructions are any morphosyntactic form to express a particular function. So Givón's definition of "passive", based only on a specific function but not a specific form to express that function, would be a "passive construction" in my terms. A "strategy" narrows the definition to specify a particular morphosyntactic form (defined in a cross-linguistically valid way). Martin's definition of "passive" describes a particular strategy for the relevant function.
Either type of definition of "passive", as a construction or a strategy, is an OK comparative concept. But one can also consider the issues of terminological continuity (Martin's "legacy usage") and utility.
Many Western grammatical terms, like "passive", in their traditional definition describe both a function and a strategy (or maybe a set of related strategies) that is commonly used for the function in Western European languages. However, when doing cross-linguistic comparison, especially an initial study of the terrain, a construction comparative concept is more useful. If one sticks to just one strategy or a subset of strategies, one will likely end up excluding a lot of languages.
Common practice among typologists has been to broaden many traditional Western grammatical terms and define them functionally, as constructions. An example is Keenan & Comrie's 1977 typology of relative clause constructions (not to mention Lehmann 1984), where "relative clause" is given a functional definition, i.e. it is defined as a construction in my terms, and applied to strategies not found in Western European languages. Anna Siewierska's 1984 typology of passives is similarly broad. I think that many traditional Western grammatical terms are best repurposed in this way. Other terms, such as "numeral classifier", are more appropriately restricted to strategies.
With respect to utility, I can think of at least two ways that defining "passive" as a construction (i.e. any morphosyntactic form expressing a particular function) is useful. A general observation (made by Givón 1981 I think) is that capturing all strategies for a construction generally sheds light on patterns of morphosyntactic change, including grammaticalization. Restricting one's study to just a subset of strategies, or just one strategy, means that one is unlikely to uncover diachronic syntactic universals. And one may not be able to explain certain quirks of the strategy or subset of strategies that was focused on.
Another, more specific reason pertaining to Martin's definition is that there may be universals about zero vs. overt coding of function. In the case of voice and related argument structure alternation constructions, including "passive", Vigus (2017) has argued that a hierarchy of zero vs. overt coding can be found. Looking at only overtly coded "passives" (whether the overt coding is bound to the verb or not) would make it difficult or impossible to discover this universal.
I'm not suggesting that Martin's definition isn't useful. There may be implicational universals pertaining specifically to the "passive" strategy that Martin singles out. But I prefer to use the term "passive" for the construction rather than a particular strategy.
These are not the only issues with defining a "passive construction"...but that's enough for now.
Bill
Croft, William. 1990/2003. Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Croft, William. 2016. Comparative concepts and language-specific categories: theory and practice. Linguistic Typology 20.377-93.
Givón, Talmy. 1981. Typology and functional domains. Studies in Language 5:163-193.
Keenan, Edward L. and Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8:63–99.
Lehmann, Christian. 1984. Der Relativsatz: Typologie seiner Strukturen, Theorie seiner Funktionen, Kompendium seiner Grammatik. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The passive: a comparative linguistic analysis. London: Croom Helm.
Vigus, Meagan. 2017. Verb marking and argument structure alternations. Presented at the 11th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, Melbourne, Australia.
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Dryer, Matthew <dryer at buffalo.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2021 3:58 PM
To: Martin Haspelmath <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>; LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Double-marked passive
[EXTERNAL]
Re Martin’s
But I now think it must be definitional, because "A-demoting" constructions without verb coding are simply ergative constructions.
In languages in which a passive construction gets reanalysed as a basic construction with an ergative , what happens is the former oblique A acquires the properties of a syntactic argument of the verb, where before it behaved like an oblique. So A-demoting constructions, i.e. ones where the A behaves like an oblique, are not ergative constructions, as far as normal usage is concerned.
Matthew
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
Date: Monday, March 22, 2021 at 6:16 PM
To: "LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org" <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Double-marked passive
In his 1994 paper "The pragmatics of de-transitive voice", T. Givón gave a purely functional definition of "passive" that made no reference to verbal marking: a construction in which "the patient is more topical than the agent, and the agent is extremely non-topical" (contrasting with "inverse voice", where the agent retains more topicality).
That was an interesting concept, but we simply don't use the term "passive" in this way. Since Siewierska (1984) and Keenan (1985) at the latest, there has been a widespread understanding of a passive construction as involving P promotion and A demotion, plus verbal marking. So this is actually a primarily formal definition. (In my 1990 paper on "passive morphology", I did not take the verb coding as definitional and claimed that it was an empirical finding that it was always there. But I now think it must be definitional, because "A-demoting" constructions without verb coding are simply ergative constructions.)
I think the verb coding has to be affixal, because otherwise we don't know for sure that it's associated with the verb. Moreover, we want to say that a passive construction is a "voice construction" (cf. Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019), and voice alternations are best defined as valency alternations with verb coding.
(I'm not sure about the notion of an "isolating" language; Chinese certainly has a number of verbal affixes, and I don't know of a language that lacks verbal affixation entirely; on the notion of "affix", see my 2021 paper in Voprosy Jazykoznanija: https://zenodo.org/record/4628279).
Best,
Martin
Am 22.03.21 um 20:57 schrieb Daniel Ross:
Martin, are you suggesting that isolating languages cannot have passives? Surely function shouldn't be necessarily tied to form?
Serial verb constructions are well known to develop into passive constructions in some languages. Are you suggesting that cannot happen until the construction morphologizes?
There are certainly some details to work out in the definition, but as a rough approximation, I'm not sure why there cannot be a passive auxiliary in these cases. English also has a passive auxiliary (BE), which happens to select for a verb in the participle form (-EN). But if English allowed for a bare verb complement of BE in that construction, would that not be a passive either?
One important point I'm trying to emphasize with my own research is that definitions should, as much as possible, avoid conflating form and function. Passivization is a function, not a form. It has to do with argument structure, not how it is marked morphosyntactically. As a draft of a simple comparative concept, a passive is a construction (that is, any form) that demotes the subject (i.e. A, etc.) argument (typically making it optional), while promoting the object (i.e. P, etc.) to that role. That could be via morphology, or an auxiliary verb, or perhaps something else (maybe just case marking?).
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 12:03 PM Guillaume Jacques <rgyalrongskad at gmail.com<mailto:rgyalrongskad at gmail.com>> wrote:
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<mailto: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<mailto: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.
[cid:image001.png at 01D71F4D.666F9310]
Best regards,
Chao
On Sun, Mar 21, 2021 at 10:07 AM Martin Haspelmath <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de<mailto: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><mailto: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
[Image removed by sender.]
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<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
--
Guillaume Jacques
Directeur de recherches
CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO - EHESS
http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques
http://panchr.hypotheses.org/
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20210323/b7f3ac61/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 59990 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20210323/b7f3ac61/attachment.png>
More information about the Lingtyp
mailing list