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Chapter 3. Antipassive in the Cariban family

  • Racquel-María Sapién , Natalia Cáceres Arandia , Spike Gildea and Sérgio Meira
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Antipassive
This chapter is in the book Antipassive

Abstract

To date, no published reference grammar of a Cariban language has described an antipassive construction. However, all languages of the family have a cognate verbal morpheme, termed detransitivizer, which prefixes to a transitive verb to derive an intransitive verb. While monovalent, the detransitivized verb bears inflectional person morphology that is distinct from that of non-derived intransitive verbs. We collected all available text examples of detransitivized verbs from five Cariban languages (Akawaio, Hixkaryana, Kari’nja, Tiriyó, and Ye’kwana) and categorized them into formal and functional subtypes. Alongside the well-described functions of reflexive/reciprocal/middle, anticausative, and passive, we encountered a substantial number of examples that can only be characterized as antipassive: the S of the detransitivized verb corresponds to the A of the transitive verb from which it is derived and the P of the transitive verb is either absent or expressed in an oblique (locative) PP.

This paper has four goals: first, we present the detransitivized construction and explain the methodology by which we identify tokens of the construction functioning as an antipassive. Second, we present the results of our text counts – a significant number of the categorizable detransitivized tokens have the antipassive function – and we discuss why this phenomenon has been overlooked until now. Third, given that the detransitivized construction is semantically polysemous, we explore the conditions under which it has an antipassive reading, identifying one pragmatic and two semantic subtypes: Nontopical P, Semantically Absent P, and Locative P. Finally, we discuss the implications of these patterns for a diachronic typology of antipassive.

Abstract

To date, no published reference grammar of a Cariban language has described an antipassive construction. However, all languages of the family have a cognate verbal morpheme, termed detransitivizer, which prefixes to a transitive verb to derive an intransitive verb. While monovalent, the detransitivized verb bears inflectional person morphology that is distinct from that of non-derived intransitive verbs. We collected all available text examples of detransitivized verbs from five Cariban languages (Akawaio, Hixkaryana, Kari’nja, Tiriyó, and Ye’kwana) and categorized them into formal and functional subtypes. Alongside the well-described functions of reflexive/reciprocal/middle, anticausative, and passive, we encountered a substantial number of examples that can only be characterized as antipassive: the S of the detransitivized verb corresponds to the A of the transitive verb from which it is derived and the P of the transitive verb is either absent or expressed in an oblique (locative) PP.

This paper has four goals: first, we present the detransitivized construction and explain the methodology by which we identify tokens of the construction functioning as an antipassive. Second, we present the results of our text counts – a significant number of the categorizable detransitivized tokens have the antipassive function – and we discuss why this phenomenon has been overlooked until now. Third, given that the detransitivized construction is semantically polysemous, we explore the conditions under which it has an antipassive reading, identifying one pragmatic and two semantic subtypes: Nontopical P, Semantically Absent P, and Locative P. Finally, we discuss the implications of these patterns for a diachronic typology of antipassive.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. The multifaceted nature of the antipassive construction 1
  4. Part 1. Lexical semantics and event representation of antipassive constructions
  5. Chapter 2. Antipassive propensities and alignment 43
  6. Chapter 3. Antipassive in the Cariban family 65
  7. Chapter 4. Aspect and modality in Pama-Nyungan antipassives 97
  8. Chapter 5. Antipassive constructions in Oceanic languages 149
  9. Chapter 6. Antipassive and the lexical meaning of verbs 177
  10. Chapter 7. Unspecified participant 213
  11. Part 2. Antipassive marking
  12. Chapter 8. Variation in the verbal marking of antipassive constructions 249
  13. Chapter 9. Antipassive derivation in Soninke (West Mande) 293
  14. Chapter 10. Explaining the antipassive-causative syncretism in Mocoví (Guaycuruan) 315
  15. Chapter 11. Polyfunctional vanka- in Nivaĉle and the antipassive category 349
  16. Part 3. Diachrony of antipassive constructions
  17. Chapter 12. The antipassive and its relationship to person markers 385
  18. Chapter 13. Antipassive derivations in Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan and their sources 427
  19. Chapter 14. The profile and development of the Maa (Eastern Nilotic) antipassive 447
  20. Part 4. Fuzzy boundaries
  21. Chapter 15. Indirect antipassive in Circassian 483
  22. Chapter 16. Antipassives in Nakh-Daghestanian languages 515
  23. Chapter 17. Antipassive and antipassive-like constructions in Mayan languages 549
  24. Chapter 18. When an antipassive isn’t an antipassive anymore 579
  25. Chapter 19. Antipassivization in Basque revisited 621
  26. Index 641
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.130.03sap

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. The multifaceted nature of the antipassive construction 1
  4. Part 1. Lexical semantics and event representation of antipassive constructions
  5. Chapter 2. Antipassive propensities and alignment 43
  6. Chapter 3. Antipassive in the Cariban family 65
  7. Chapter 4. Aspect and modality in Pama-Nyungan antipassives 97
  8. Chapter 5. Antipassive constructions in Oceanic languages 149
  9. Chapter 6. Antipassive and the lexical meaning of verbs 177
  10. Chapter 7. Unspecified participant 213
  11. Part 2. Antipassive marking
  12. Chapter 8. Variation in the verbal marking of antipassive constructions 249
  13. Chapter 9. Antipassive derivation in Soninke (West Mande) 293
  14. Chapter 10. Explaining the antipassive-causative syncretism in Mocoví (Guaycuruan) 315
  15. Chapter 11. Polyfunctional vanka- in Nivaĉle and the antipassive category 349
  16. Part 3. Diachrony of antipassive constructions
  17. Chapter 12. The antipassive and its relationship to person markers 385
  18. Chapter 13. Antipassive derivations in Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan and their sources 427
  19. Chapter 14. The profile and development of the Maa (Eastern Nilotic) antipassive 447
  20. Part 4. Fuzzy boundaries
  21. Chapter 15. Indirect antipassive in Circassian 483
  22. Chapter 16. Antipassives in Nakh-Daghestanian languages 515
  23. Chapter 17. Antipassive and antipassive-like constructions in Mayan languages 549
  24. Chapter 18. When an antipassive isn’t an antipassive anymore 579
  25. Chapter 19. Antipassivization in Basque revisited 621
  26. Index 641
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