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Re: Passive and active....

From:nicole perrin <nicole.eap@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 28, 1999, 2:57
FFlores wrote:
> > Barry Garcia <Barry_Garcia@...> wrote: > > > > So, how do all of your languages handle active and passive voice, if at > > all? > > I'm partial towards marking voice in verbs, probably because > using a simple 'to be + participle' construction looks unexotic > (to me, that is).
<snip stuff about Pablo's conlangs> I usually mark voice in verbs too. In Nevokányi the stem changes: meszi -- to see, infinitive mesz- --normal stem meszis- --passive stem and the agent (usually) takes the instrumental case, with the patient taking the nominative. Khundruzn required a similar construction on the verb, as well as a particle after the agent. In a newly begun lang, önaila, which I'm constructing for a friend and so want to make pretty simple and not incredibly foreign, I think I'm going to use a special auxiliary verb to construct the passive, something like this: I hit the ball. I.nom the.ball.acc hit.past The ball was hit by me. the.ball.nom I.inst hit.inf passive.past Which is a lot like English, it's just that it would use a completely different auxiliary for the passive, not "to be." Nicole -- nicole.eap@snet.net http://nicole.conlang.org