Re: Active again.

Markus Miekk-oja skrev:

> > Some sort of voice, like Henrik suggested, would perhaps be possible. I'm
> > eager to see what you, Henrik, can come up with!
> It's called antipassive - making an intransitive verb to behave like a
> transitive one, taking an AGT instead of PAT as subject -
> She:AGT hit him:PAT and fell:ANTIP, or, She:AGT ran and fell:ANTIP
Yes, I know of the antipassive. But what it does is demoting the
object of a transitive clause, unless the definition of the
antipassive is wider than I know. So you make intransitive clauses
out of transitive ones, just like with the passive voice. Just
the other way around, so to say.

What you *could* use the antipassive for in the above examples
is demoting the object in the first clause (him:PAT) to an
oblique case. This wouldn't be very useful though, because
case-marking in Piata isn't so much about transitivity, but
about control. The "subject" of 'hit' is marked as AGT regardless
of its being transitive or intransitive, because the hitter is
in control. And the "subject" of 'fall' is always PAT, because
falling isn't something you control (at least not in this case).

So, what you would end up with is this:

She:AGT hit:ANTIPASSIVE (at him:OBL) and [she:PAT] fell.

The problem with the "subject" of both verbs taking different
case-marking remains.

It's possible that I've misunderstood you completly, though,
and I'm sorry in that case. I feel a cold creeping up on me,
which is blurring my senses. :/

Daniel Andreasson

Reply