Passivization is a detransitivizing operation that takes a transitive clause (The dog bites the man.) and turns it into an intransitive clause by promoting the P argument (the man) to morphosyntactic S function. In the resulting intransitive clause, the former A argument (the dog) either vanishes or adopts an oblique function: The man is bitten (by the dog). ‘Mediopassives’, ‘anticausatives’ and the sort (e.g. x breaks the vase > the vase breaks) also count as passives. For languages with multiple passive constructions (e.g. ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ passives), this question should be answered 1 if the agent can be overtly expressed in any of these types of passive clauses. If the agent is overtly expressed, it may be unmarked or it may be marked in a number of ways: by case marking or adpositions, word order, etc.
Zuni (ISO 639-3: zun, Glottolog: zuni1245)
Zuni does not allow the addition of an agent role to a passive clause (Nichols 1997: 126) and is coded 0.
a. hom nicikya 'uk-na-'kya 1SG.ACC ring give-PASS-PST ‘I was given a ring.’ (Nichols 1997: 126) b. *tom 'an hom nicikya 'uk-na-'kya 2SG.ACC P 1SG.ACC ring give-PASS-PST ‘I was given a ring by you.’ (Nichols 1997: 126) c. *tom 'akkya hom nicikya 'uk-na-'kya 2SG.ACC with 1SG.ACC ring give-PASS-PST ‘I was given a ring by you.’ (Nichols 1997: 126)
Liko (ISO 639-3: lik, Glottolog: lika1243)
De Wit (2015: 374–375) describes a neutro-passive construction in Liko, which appears to be a passive construction that does not allow an overtly expressed agent. Because the agent cannot be expressed, he argues that this construction is not a true passive. Elsewhere, he concludes that there is no passive in Liko (De Wit 2015: 410–414). The neutro-passive does qualify as a passive for the purpose of Grambank, however, and the fact that the agent cannot occur with the neutro-passive triggers a 0 for this feature.
Some examples of the neutro-passive derivation, with -ɩ́k in Liko:
ká-nʊw-á ‘to tear’ → ká-nʊw-ɩ́k-á ‘to tear, intransitive’ kó-ɓún-ó ‘to break’ → kó-ɓún-ík-ó ‘to break, intransitive’
Raji (ISO 639-3: rji, Glottolog: raji1240)
Raji has a passive suffix, -i. Passive constructions allow the expression of the agent marked with ablative case (Khatri 2008: 27). Raji is coded 1 for this feature.
a. ram-ɦatiŋ bʌtaŋ dza–i–k-a Ram-ABL rice eat-PASS-SD-PST ‘Rice was eaten by Ram.’ (Khatri 2008: 27) b. ram-ɦatiŋ bʰwa sʌtika Ram-ABL bird kill-PASS-SD-PST ‘The bird was killed by Ram.’ (Khatri 2008: 27)
Haspelmath, Martin. 1990. The grammaticization of passive morphology. Studies in Language, 14(1). 25–72.
Keenan, Edward L. & Matthew S. Dryer. 2007. Passive in the world’s languages. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, volume I: Clause structure (Second Edition), 325–361. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. 2013. Passive constructions. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Zúñiga, Fernando & Seppo Kittilä. 2019. Grammatical voice. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
de Wit, Gerrit. 2015. Liko phonology and grammar: A Bantu language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leiden: Leiden University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Khatri, Ramesh. 2008. The structure of verbs and sentences of Raji. Kirtipur: Tribhuvan University. (MA thesis.)
Nichols, Lynn. 1997. Topics in Zuni syntax. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
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| 0 | absent | 797 | |
| 1 | present | 545 | |
| ? | Not known | 789 |
| Name | Glottocode | Family | Macroarea | Contributor | Value | Source | Comment |
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