Feature GB303: Is there a phonologically free antipassive marker ("particle" or "auxiliary")?

Patrons: Jakob Lesage

Description ⇫

Summary

An antipassive marker detransitivizes verbs by removing the P argument or realizing it as an oblique. In a construction with ergative alignment, this means that the A argument of a transitive clause is encoded as the S argument in a corresponding antipassive clause. An antipassive marker often also has other detransitivizing functions, such as reflexivization, reciprocal, passive, or anticausative. In practice, this feature targets any intransitivizing marker that is not, or not only, a reflexive, reciprocal, passive, or anticausative marker. This question targets phonologically independent particles or auxiliaries marking antipassive clauses.

Procedure

  1. Code 1 if a source mentions a phonologically independent antipassive marker. This can be a particle or an auxiliary.
  2. Code 1 if there is no information on phonological (in)dependence but the relevant antipassive marker (auxiliary or particle) is not orthographically bound to the verb. Add a comment that your analysis is based on orthography.
  3. Code 1 if you identify a phonologically free antipassive marker in the examples/texts provided in a source.
  4. Code 0 if a source mentions that there is no antipassive.
  5. Code 0 if a source mentions a phonologically bound antipassive marker or other means of marking antipassives, but not one marked with a particle or auxiliary.
  6. Code 0 if a grammar treats other valency changing operations in considerable depth but does not mention antipassive constructions.
  7. Code ? if there are examples that contain a potential antipassive construction but their analysis remains inconclusive.
  8. Code ? if there are no sources treating valency changing operations in the language or if treatment of them is very limited.

Examples

Movima (ISO-639-3: mzp, Glottolog: movi1243)

Movima has a preverbal antipassive particle, variably realized as kaw or kwey (Haude 2006: 287). The kaw-construction places the agent of the clause in a focus position and codes the undergoer as oblique. Movima is coded 1.

In the following examples, the agent (‘he’) is expressed as an enclitic (=us, absential masculine) in the transitive clause and the undergoer (‘the glass’) is unmarked for case. In the antipassive construction, the agent is expressed with a free pronoun (usko, ‘he’) and the undergoer is marked as oblique on the article (n-as).

a. bay-a-cho=us            as        waːso
knock-DIR-inside=M.AST  ART.NEUT  glass
‘He has broken the glass.’ (Haude 2006: 287)

b. usko    kwey    bay-aː-cho       n-as          waːso
3SG.M   ANTIP   knock-DIR-inside OBL-ART.NEUT  glass
‘He has broken the glass.’ (Haude 2006: 287)

(Abbreviations: AST absential)

Kuku Yalanji (ISO 639-3: gvn, Glottolog: kuku1273)

Kuku Yalanji has ergative alignment of case marking on nouns. It also has an antipassive suffix, -ji. In the active clause below, the A argument (‘the man’) is marked with ergative case. In the antipassive clause, it is coded with absolutive case, like an S argument. The former absolutive argument (P) is coded as a location in the antipassive clause. Because the antipassive marker is bound and it is the only antipassive marker in Kuku Yalanji, the language is coded 0.

Note that the alignment pattern of case marking is accusative for pronouns, so non-pronominal A arguments are marked with ergative case, while pronominal A arguments are marked with nominative case. 

a. Active clause:
nyulu      dingkar-angka    minya        nuka-ny
3SG.NOM(A) man-ERG:PT(A)    meat.ABS(P)  eat-PST
‘The man ate meat.’ (Patz 2002: 152)

b. Antipassive clause:
nyulu       dingkar      minya-nga    nuka-ji-ny
3SG.NOM(S)  man.ABS(S)   meat-LOC     eat-ANTIP-PST
‘The man had a good feed of meat (he wasted nothing.)’ (Patz 2002: 152)

(Abbreviations: PT potent case)

Further reading

Cooreman, Ann. 1994. A functional typology of antipassives. In Barbara A. Fox & Paul J. Hopper (eds), Voice: Form and function, 49–88. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Heaton, Raina. 2020. Antipassives in crosslinguistic perspective. Annual Review of Linguistics 6(1). 131–153.

Janic, Katarzyna. 2013. L’antipassif dans les langues accusatives. Lyon: Université Lumière Lyon 2. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Polinsky, Maria. 2013. Antipassive constructions. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Polinsky, Maria. 2017. Antipassive. In Jessica Coon, Diane Massam & Lisa DeMena Travis (eds), The Oxford handbook of ergativity, 308–331. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zúñiga, Fernando & Seppo Kittilä. 2019. Grammatical voice. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

Haude, Katharina. 2006. A grammar of Movima. Nijmegen: Radboud Universiteit. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Patz, Elisabeth. 2002. A grammar of the Kuku Yalanji language of North Queensland. (Pacific Linguistics, 527.) Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.


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Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment