Re: Antipassive
| From: | John Cowan <jcowan@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, June 26, 2001, 21:43 |
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BP Jonsson wrote:
> Can someone please explain to me WTH an antipassive does?
As I understand it, it is a construction which, like the
passive, transforms transitive sentences into intransitive ones.
Unlike the passive, the *agent* is made prominent, and the patient
is either omitted altogether or introduced as an oblique argument.
Passives do just the opposite.
Antipassives are often, though not exclusively, found in ergative
languages: in that case they transform "John-ERG saw George-ABS" into
"John-ABS saw-ANTIPASS (PREP George-ABS)" where PREP is some
preposition.
--
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