ihcequi doing it=?windows-1252?Q?=92s_?=applicative thing

Jesse Lovegren lovegren at buffalo.edu
Thu Nov 3 01:56:05 UTC 2011


Hi Listeros,
  I think the term anticausative has always confused me because it would
seem that it mgiht be coined off an analogy with antipassive, but it's a
different kind of "anti-".
  An antipassive is, like a passive, a valence-reduced form of a normally
transitive verb, but instead of the notional A argument being demoted (as
in a passive), the O argument is demoted. So in a basic transitive clause,
both A and O are core arguments. In passive, the erstwhile A is expressed
as an oblique or not at all, and in antipassive the O is likewise demoted.
  The anticausative is the opposite of the causative in a different way. In
a causative, valence is increased, and the causer of an action is
introduced as a subject argument, the original arguments being demoted (A/S
demoted to O, O demoted to oblique, usually). Causatives introduce a causer
which could not have been inferred otherwise. Anticausatives do the
opposite thing. Instead of increasing valence, they decrease it. The
underlying verb would normally be transitive, and erstwhile O is promoted
to S, and erstwhile A is not expressed at all. And instead of introducing
an effector as causatives do, they introduce the implication that there is
no causer, while in the basic transitive form the A argument would normally
be understood as the causer. I think the standard view is that the
implication of agentlessness sets anticausatives apart from agentless
passives.
  So if I were encountering Spanish for the first time, and I found two
agentless expressions

(1) La ventana estuvo quebrada
(2) La ventana se quebró

  I might check whether it is possible to add some kind of adjunct which
reinforces the agentlessness of the action, e.g. see if I can have my
consultant agree that it's acceptable to say something like (3), or check
in my corpus whether (1) ever gets used in a situation where the agent can
be clearly inferred.

(3) "?De la nada la ventana estuvo quebrada"

  [I am attaching a diagram from p.7 of Dixon&Aikhenvald's "Changing
Valency"]

On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 9:13 PM, John Sullivan <idiez at me.com> wrote:

> Jonathan and/or Mitsuya,
>        Can you explain the concept of anticausative?
> John
>
> On Nov 2, 2011, at 4:21 PM, Jonathan Amith wrote:
>
> > Yes, that is there, but he mentioned a deverbal form uitecqui, which is
> > what I can't find.
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 2:05 PM, John F. Schwaller <schwallr at potsdam.edu
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Could it possibly be lurking as uiuitequi - nite - apalear a otro  ???
> f.
> >> 158 of Molina
> >>
> >>
> >> On 11/2/2011 1:37 PM, Jonathan Amith wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> I couldn't find uitecqui in my version of Molina. Rémi Siméon has
> uitecqui
> >>> as "golpeado, fustigado, corregido, castigado" and has uitequi as a
> >>> transitive.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> --
> >> *****************************
> >> John F. Schwaller
> >> President
> >> SUNY - Potsdam
> >> 44 Pierrepont Ave.
> >> Potsdam, NY  13676
> >> Tel. 315-267-2100
> >> FAX 315-267-2496
> >>
> >>
> >> ______________________________**_________________
> >> Nahuatl mailing list
> >> Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> >> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/**listinfo/nahuatl<
> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Nahuatl mailing list
> > Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> > http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nahuatl mailing list
> Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl
>
>


-- 
Jesse Lovegren
University at Buffalo
Department of Linguistics
645 Baldy Hall
office +1 716 645 0136
cell +1 716 352 3643
text +1 830 266 9399
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
Nahuatl mailing list
Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl


More information about the Nahuat-l mailing list