The compositional nature of the passive
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Werner Abraham✝
Abstract
It is claimed that in languages without a synthetic passive verbal morphology, the passive diathesis is compositional derived by implication or radical underspecification rather than generated in a direct way. As finitizing auxiliaries, equivalents of BE/ESSERE or HAVE/HAB¯ERE are employed together with the participial ANTERIOR (‘past’) morpheme. A distinction needs to be made between ‘passive sense’ and ‘passive denotation’. The claimis that languages such as German, along with numerous other languages, may be seen to provide a ‘passive’ by derivation from the complex ‘AUX+past participle’. The main body of the paper consists of evidence for the assumption that no direct passive meaning is provided by this complex ‘AUX+Anterior participle’, foremost from German. The past participle form has more than one function, an active and a passive one. The claim is that the past participle is void of any diathetic/ voice denotation except for the categorial status of adjectival. The latter allows the inference of a number of syntactic properties, i.e., most prominently a none-agentive external argument which, in syntactic collocation with the monovalent copulas sein and werden, contributes to the passive sense. A further distinction will be made between two different past participle lexicals: one on the basis of aspectual perfectivity implying an ‘approach phase’, antecedent to a result phase and presupposing an agentive external argument; and another, imperfective PP, which is amenable to the presupposition of such an ‘approach phase’ by way of pragmatic implicature. This distinction will be spelled in some detail in terms of formal semantics. Evidence for the formal and empirical correctness of this approach will be drawn from various languages similar to German in some, but not all, respects: Russian, Swedish, Dutch, and Latin. Turning to passive syntax it will be shown that the mere assumption of a passive morpho-syntax to be represented directly in UG-terms will not do justice to the evidence provided by the data and their distributional properties. Rather, it will be held and shown in some detail that passives are to be distinguished in accordance with their derivational basis as perfectives or imperfectives, not only as lexicals but also in terms of true clausal aspectual phrases (e.g., as regards directional vs. non-directional adverbs). Ergatives, commonly held to be a verbal class in their own right, will turn out as belonging to the perfective type of voice.
In essence, this paper wants to demonstrate that there are principally two pathways toward a solution for the undecided semantics of the past participle forms: the ‘pragmatic’ solution presented in Section 4.5., where the fundamental semantics of the participle form is taken to be past without any voice reading. In Section 10, on the other hand, it is assumed that the participle formis a categorially underspecified ‘root’ in terms of Distributed Morphology reaching a specific reading only in an extended morphosyntactic context.
Abstract
It is claimed that in languages without a synthetic passive verbal morphology, the passive diathesis is compositional derived by implication or radical underspecification rather than generated in a direct way. As finitizing auxiliaries, equivalents of BE/ESSERE or HAVE/HAB¯ERE are employed together with the participial ANTERIOR (‘past’) morpheme. A distinction needs to be made between ‘passive sense’ and ‘passive denotation’. The claimis that languages such as German, along with numerous other languages, may be seen to provide a ‘passive’ by derivation from the complex ‘AUX+past participle’. The main body of the paper consists of evidence for the assumption that no direct passive meaning is provided by this complex ‘AUX+Anterior participle’, foremost from German. The past participle form has more than one function, an active and a passive one. The claim is that the past participle is void of any diathetic/ voice denotation except for the categorial status of adjectival. The latter allows the inference of a number of syntactic properties, i.e., most prominently a none-agentive external argument which, in syntactic collocation with the monovalent copulas sein and werden, contributes to the passive sense. A further distinction will be made between two different past participle lexicals: one on the basis of aspectual perfectivity implying an ‘approach phase’, antecedent to a result phase and presupposing an agentive external argument; and another, imperfective PP, which is amenable to the presupposition of such an ‘approach phase’ by way of pragmatic implicature. This distinction will be spelled in some detail in terms of formal semantics. Evidence for the formal and empirical correctness of this approach will be drawn from various languages similar to German in some, but not all, respects: Russian, Swedish, Dutch, and Latin. Turning to passive syntax it will be shown that the mere assumption of a passive morpho-syntax to be represented directly in UG-terms will not do justice to the evidence provided by the data and their distributional properties. Rather, it will be held and shown in some detail that passives are to be distinguished in accordance with their derivational basis as perfectives or imperfectives, not only as lexicals but also in terms of true clausal aspectual phrases (e.g., as regards directional vs. non-directional adverbs). Ergatives, commonly held to be a verbal class in their own right, will turn out as belonging to the perfective type of voice.
In essence, this paper wants to demonstrate that there are principally two pathways toward a solution for the undecided semantics of the past participle forms: the ‘pragmatic’ solution presented in Section 4.5., where the fundamental semantics of the participle form is taken to be past without any voice reading. In Section 10, on the other hand, it is assumed that the participle formis a categorially underspecified ‘root’ in terms of Distributed Morphology reaching a specific reading only in an extended morphosyntactic context.
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
