[Lingtyp] Transitive verbs with both active and passive readings

[Martin Haspelmath]

It seems to me that we want to use the term "passive" for a kind of 
construction-strategy, not for a kind of construction-function (using 
terms inspired by Croft 2022). The function can be roughly described as 
patient foregrounding and/or agent backgrounding, and quite a few 
languages use a peculiar construction with verbal marking and agent 
downgrading. But not all languages

So we probably don't want to talk about "active and passive readings", 
or only very informally.

If the Aramaic form /ifṯeḥ/ can be used also for 'it has been opened', 
it means the language has a flexivalency alternation. (Sometimes it's 
called "lability", but I prefer to use the term "labile" in a narrow 
way, for the 'break(tr.)/break(intr.)' type.)

A range of flexivalency alternations are described in §10 of my paper on 
valency and voice constructions (https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005941). 
In Mande languages such as Bambara, obliagent constructions (sometimes 
called "uncoded passices") are very common, and these also occur in 
quite a few Atlantic creoles, as noted by Silvia Kouwenberg.

Best,

Martin

On 27.07.23 11:28, Sergey Loesov 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
>
>
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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