[Lingtyp] Transitive verbs with both active and passive readings

[Randy J. LaPolla]

Hi Jianming,
Thanks for your reply.

When you say “without a specific context”, you are actually creating two interpretive contexts in your mind to create the two different meanings; there is no such thing as understanding language (or any phenomenon) without creating a context of interpretation. The fact that you can create these two meanings from the same form means there is no voice opposition in the language. The semantics of the referents referred to can influence the interpretation, but that is also not voice, e.g. 老师发了成绩单 [teacher distribute grade sheets] and 学生发了成绩单 [student distribute grade sheets] are normally understood out of specific context as having different transitivity structures, with ’teacher’ as agent, but ‘students' as patient, but this is not voice.

Y. R. Chao argued that bei and ba are  "pre-transitive" markers that help to disambiguate the direction of action, not passive and active markers.He also argued that even in the structure N V N’, the direction of action is not necessarily from the initial N to the N’, and he used the example of ‘dog bite man’. 

If you agree with Chao (and Lü Shuxiang, and me) that Mandarin is topic-comment, not subject-predicate, there is no “basic AVP” order. As Chao said, all clauses are topic comment, though in some cases there is no topic.

All the best,
Randy
——
Professor Randy J. LaPolla（罗仁地), PhD FAHA 
Center for Language Sciences
Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences
Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
A302, Muduo Building, #18 Jinfeng Road, Zhuhai City, Guangdong, China

https://randylapolla.info <https://randylapolla.info/>
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-6196    

邮编：519087
广东省珠海市唐家湾镇金凤路18号木铎楼A302
北京师范大学珠海校区
人文和社会科学高等研究院
语言科学研究中心 


> On 28 Jul 2023, at 7:22 AM, Wu Jianming <wu.jianming2011 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Randy 
>  
>     The concept of nouns, verbs, voice, and transitivity indeed involves matching content and forms in language.  In Chinese, the expression "chicken not eat" can carry the same meaning as "chicken not eaten" or "chicken not eating" without a specific context. This implies that the active and passive content of voice, which determines how the verb relates to the subject, does exist in Chinese. However, within a known context, the expression forms can be omitted or become redundant.
>    On the other hand, using constructions like "bei + Agent" or "ba + Patient" provides a better way to encode both the content and forms of voice in Chinese, particularly when necessary. This showcases the flexibility and uniqueness of the language in conveying meaning.
> So, in Chinese, when it comes to voice, we indeed have both the content side and the expression side of voice, with constructions like "bei +A" , “ba +P” or the basic AVP order being utilized as needed.  But for an isolated NP+VP construction without a context, the active or passive status of the verb is sometimes ambiguous.
>  
> Regards,
>  
> Jianming Wu 
>  
> Shanghai International Studies University
>  
>  
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows
>  
> From: Randy J. LaPolla <mailto:randy.lapolla at gmail.com>
> Sent: 2023年7月27日 22:04
> To: Sergey Loesov <mailto:sergeloesov at gmail.com>
> Cc: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Transitive verbs with both active and passive readings
>  
> Hi Sergey,
> Y. R. Chao argued that as Mandarin Chinese verbs have no inherent direction of action, a corollary of the topic-comment (not subject predicate) structure of clauses, Mandarin Chinese has no voice distinction (Mandarin Primer, 1948: 35, with his Romanisation replaced by Pinyin and glosses added):
>  
> “An important corollary to this [topic-comment structure-RJL] is that the direction of action in verbs is to be inferred from the context. Thus, in talking about feeding poultry, Jı̄ bù chı̄ le [chicken NEG eat PFV] means 'The chickens are not eating any more,' but as a reply to a host offering more chicken, the same sentence would mean '(As for) chicken, (I) am not going to eat any more.' Again, Liǎng-ge rén zuò yı̄-bǎ yı̌zi [two CL people sit one-CL chair]' Two people sit on one chair' : Yı̄-bǎ yı̌zi zuò liǎng-ge rén [one-CL chair sit two-CL people] 'One chair seats two people.' In short, there is no distinction of voice in Chinese verbs." 
>  
> Hope this helps.
>  
> All the best,
> Randy
> ——
> Professor Randy J. LaPolla（罗仁地), PhD FAHA 
> Center for Language Sciences
> Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences
> Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
> A302, Muduo Building, #18 Jinfeng Road, Zhuhai City, Guangdong, China
>  
> https://randylapolla.info <https://randylapolla.info/>
> ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-6196    
>  
> 邮编：519087
> 广东省珠海市唐家湾镇金凤路18号木铎楼A302
> 北京师范大学珠海校区
> 人文和社会科学高等研究院
> 语言科学研究中心 
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> 
> 
> 
> On 27 Jul 2023, at 5:28 PM, Sergey Loesov <sergeloesov at gmail.com <mailto:sergeloesov at gmail.com>> wrote:
>  
> Dear colleagues,
> 
> Do you know of languages that have past-tense forms of transitive verbs with both active and passive readings? In particular, languages in which the same token can appear as both active and passive, depending on the context?
> 
> This seems to be the case in the unwritten language Modern Western Aramaic, spoken in the Syrian Anti-Lebanon/Kalamoun. Thus, ifṯeḥ (a Perfect-Resultative verb form) may mean ‘he (has) opened’ and ‘he has been opened/he is opened.’
> 
>  
> Thank you very much,
> 
>  
> Sergey
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20230728/c17e7f51/attachment.htm>