[Lingtyp] “passive lability” in Modern Western Aramaic

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Dear Sergey – Let’s call the pattern that’s illustrated by your first example a ‘causative-inchoative alternation’. I don’t mean to imply an analysis by this label; I’m just looking for a label for ease of reference. So the ‘perfect’ form _čbir_ participates in this alternation. Does the ‘preterite’ form _čabr_ also participate in this alternation? Your message doesn’t say, but I’m guessing it doesn’t?

Other than that, and the apparent aspectual contrast, the two forms seem to differ in _čabr_ implicating or perhaps even encoding intentionality. This makes me think of the kind of aspect-governed alignment split well-known from Indic languages, where you tend to get ergative-absolutive alignment (and ergative marking) primarily or exclusively in perfective aspect. And ergative *marking* in turn in some languages (e.g., in Hindi/Urdu) implicates intentionality.

(I remember a talk (it may have been a plenary lecture) the late Hansjürgen Sasse gave at a DGfS annual meeting in the ‘90s, in which he claimed that Semitic has gone through several cycles in which the Indic-style aspect-governed alignment pattern emerged, was lost, and re-emerged. Of course, I have no idea whether this idea is accepted among Semiticists.)

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Sergey Loesov <sergeloesov at gmail.com>
Date: Monday, July 31, 2023 at 16:09
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] “passive lability” in Modern Western Aramaic

Dear colleagues,
This is a follow-up to my query about “passive lability” in Modern Western Aramaic, i.e., about past-tense forms of transitive verbs with both active and passive readings.
I am now engaged in fieldwork on Modern Western Aramaic in Syrian Qalamoun. Today one of my informants produced the following utterance (while working with the verb čbr ‘to break’):
Ḥanān čbirōl battixča, hoš battixča čbīra.
Ḥanān
čbir-ō-l
battix-č-a
hoš
battix-č-a
čbīr-a
pn
break.prf-f-dom
watermelon-f-free
now
watermelon-f-free
broken-fs.indf

‘Hanan has broken the watermelon (by chance), now the watermelon is broken.’
(Here the verb form čbīra ‘has broken/is broken’ appears in both active and passive readings.)
 But he rejects
*Ḥanān čbirōl kīsa.
Ḥanān
čbir-ō-l
kīs-a
pn
break.prf-f-dom
twig-free

‘Hanan has broken the twig.’
(When Hanan intentionally broke the twig against her knee, in order to elicit the informant’s response.)
Instead, he approves of
Ḥanān čabraččəl kīsa.
Ḥanān
čabr-ač-č-l
kīs-a
pn
break.pret-3fs-pleo-dom
twig-free

‘Hanan broke the twig.’

How can one approach this piece of evidence?
Best wishes,
 Sergey



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