Re: Is this a passive?

En réponse à Estel Telcontar :

>I have a morpheme in mind for one of my languages, and I'm wondering if
>it counts as a passive.  As far as I understand, passive normally
>
>(1) promotes the direct object to subject
>(2) a. deletes the subject
>  OR
>     b. demotes the subject to an oblique
>
>The morpheme I'm thinking of is okay on (1) and (2)a. : The original
>direct object becomes the subject, and the original subject can be
>omitted.  It's in (2)b. that the question comes in: if the original
>subject is still expressed, it is expressed as a direct object, not as
>an oblique.
I'd still call that a passive, even though "inverse" might be a better term
for it. But in grammars it's the vocabulary used to describe the language
which usually adapts to the language, not the other way round ;))) . So
using the term "passive" is by no way wrong :) .

For what is worth, Maggel has a voice that does exactly that: invert the
subject and object of the sentence. I still call it voice because it
patterns with the other voices, despite the fact that it doesn't change the
valency of the verb and that its meaning is quite strange for a voice. I
call it "sensitive", because it's used with verbs of voluntary sensing
("listen to", "watch", etc...) to make them into verbs of unvoluntary
sensing ("hear", "see", etc...), and with other transitive verbs to
indicate that the speaker has had first-hand experience on what s/he
describes. Isn't that a strange voice? ;))))

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.