'Agent defocusing' revisited
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Andrea Sansó
Abstract
This article presents some descriptive generalisations about the distribution of passive and impersonal constructions in five European languages (Italian, Spanish, Polish, Danish, and Modern Greek). The constructions analysed include (but are not limited to) passive/impersonal constructions in which a reflexive marker is used (Italian, Spanish, and Polish), or in which there is a bound morpheme historically connected to the reflexive pronoun (Danish); so-called impersonal passives, i.e. constructions in which there is an unequivocal formal relationship of the predicate with passive morphology, but either there is no patient, or the patient is marked in the same way in which it is marked in the active sentence (e.g., the -no/-to construction in Polish, the impersonal passive in Danish); man-clauses, i.e. impersonal active clauses having some general noun (“man”, “people”, etc.) as subject (Danish). The corpus consists of Umberto Eco’s novel Il nome della rosa, and its Danish, Modern Greek, Polish, and Spanish translations.
Much in the spirit of Myhill (1997), it is argued that the distribution of these constructions in texts is sensitive to the distinction between different types of agent defocusing: there are some discourse conditions under which a given construction is preferred to others, and this can only be captured through a careful inspection of texts. Three basic situation types are identified which are systematically associated with certain modes of expression in each of the five languages of the sample: these are configurations of prototypical semantic features and discourse conditions concerning the agent, the patient (if present), and the nature of the event. The statistical significance of the correlation between situation types and construction types is carefully evaluated, and the results are encouraging: in each of the languages of the sample there is a consistent division of labour among passive and impersonal constructions. This allows us to conclude that the facts surveyed are hardly accidental, and to advance some descriptive generalisations, of both a formal and a functional nature. It is suggested that there is a functional cline of agent defocusing ranging from those cases in which the agent is easily recoverable from the context to those in which it cannot be identified but generally. This cline is correlated with a syntactic gradient of patient and agent coding, although the goal of finding perfect correlations between function and form in the realm of discourse is to be abandoned.
Abstract
This article presents some descriptive generalisations about the distribution of passive and impersonal constructions in five European languages (Italian, Spanish, Polish, Danish, and Modern Greek). The constructions analysed include (but are not limited to) passive/impersonal constructions in which a reflexive marker is used (Italian, Spanish, and Polish), or in which there is a bound morpheme historically connected to the reflexive pronoun (Danish); so-called impersonal passives, i.e. constructions in which there is an unequivocal formal relationship of the predicate with passive morphology, but either there is no patient, or the patient is marked in the same way in which it is marked in the active sentence (e.g., the -no/-to construction in Polish, the impersonal passive in Danish); man-clauses, i.e. impersonal active clauses having some general noun (“man”, “people”, etc.) as subject (Danish). The corpus consists of Umberto Eco’s novel Il nome della rosa, and its Danish, Modern Greek, Polish, and Spanish translations.
Much in the spirit of Myhill (1997), it is argued that the distribution of these constructions in texts is sensitive to the distinction between different types of agent defocusing: there are some discourse conditions under which a given construction is preferred to others, and this can only be captured through a careful inspection of texts. Three basic situation types are identified which are systematically associated with certain modes of expression in each of the five languages of the sample: these are configurations of prototypical semantic features and discourse conditions concerning the agent, the patient (if present), and the nature of the event. The statistical significance of the correlation between situation types and construction types is carefully evaluated, and the results are encouraging: in each of the languages of the sample there is a consistent division of labour among passive and impersonal constructions. This allows us to conclude that the facts surveyed are hardly accidental, and to advance some descriptive generalisations, of both a formal and a functional nature. It is suggested that there is a functional cline of agent defocusing ranging from those cases in which the agent is easily recoverable from the context to those in which it cannot be identified but generally. This cline is correlated with a syntactic gradient of patient and agent coding, although the goal of finding perfect correlations between function and form in the realm of discourse is to be abandoned.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributor's addresses vii
- Abbreviations ix
- Introduction: Passivization and typology 1
-
Active–passive and reflexives
- Passives in Lithuanian (in comparison with Russian) 29
- Passive and middle in Indo-European 62
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Triggers — aspectual, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic: case studies
- Pragmatic nature of Mandarin passive-like constructions 83
- Development of thùuk passive marker in Thai 115
- The passives of Modern Irish 132
- The passive in Erzya-Mordvin folklore 165
- Grammatical voice and tense-aspect in Slavic 191
- Passive in Nganasan 213
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Actor demotion
- 'Agent defocusing' revisited 232
- Relations between Actor-demoting devices in Lithuanian 274
-
Grammaticalization in long-term diachrony
- The rise and grammaticalization paths of Latin fieri and facere as passive auxiliaries 311
- Grammatical relations in passive clauses 337
-
Argument structure and case
- Two types of detransitive constructions in the dialects of Japanese 352
- Passive and argument structure 373
- Case-driven agree, EPP, and passive in Turkish 383
- A unique feature of the direct passive in Japanese 403
-
Actor demotion
- Passive as a feature-suppression operation 442
-
Event semantics — Aspectual and semantic triggers
- The compositional nature of the passive 462
- The impersonal passive 502
- Simple preterit and composite perfect tense 518
- Author index 544
- Subject index 548
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributor's addresses vii
- Abbreviations ix
- Introduction: Passivization and typology 1
-
Active–passive and reflexives
- Passives in Lithuanian (in comparison with Russian) 29
- Passive and middle in Indo-European 62
-
Triggers — aspectual, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic: case studies
- Pragmatic nature of Mandarin passive-like constructions 83
- Development of thùuk passive marker in Thai 115
- The passives of Modern Irish 132
- The passive in Erzya-Mordvin folklore 165
- Grammatical voice and tense-aspect in Slavic 191
- Passive in Nganasan 213
-
Actor demotion
- 'Agent defocusing' revisited 232
- Relations between Actor-demoting devices in Lithuanian 274
-
Grammaticalization in long-term diachrony
- The rise and grammaticalization paths of Latin fieri and facere as passive auxiliaries 311
- Grammatical relations in passive clauses 337
-
Argument structure and case
- Two types of detransitive constructions in the dialects of Japanese 352
- Passive and argument structure 373
- Case-driven agree, EPP, and passive in Turkish 383
- A unique feature of the direct passive in Japanese 403
-
Actor demotion
- Passive as a feature-suppression operation 442
-
Event semantics — Aspectual and semantic triggers
- The compositional nature of the passive 462
- The impersonal passive 502
- Simple preterit and composite perfect tense 518
- Author index 544
- Subject index 548
