Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Active languages

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Tuesday, August 2, 2005, 7:57
Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:

> Hallo! > > Thomas Wier wrote: > > > Patrick Littell wrote: > > > They describe > > > Choctaw as having neither a passive nor an antipassive, and Lezgian > > > as having both. (Although Lezgian is sometimes described as ergative, > > > it's active by their definition of active.) Lezgian does not appear to > > > have a *morphological* passive or antipassive voice, though; it appears > > > to simply allow the agent or patient to go unexpressed. > > > > Do they run any of the standard tests for a change in grammatical > > relations? I ask, because just stating that arguments can go > > unexpressed is a pretty naive way to talk about voice systems. > > It is. In Old Albic (my conlang), each (or both) of the arguments > of a transitive clause can go unexpressed, with the verb not carrying > the agreement markers: > > (1) Lennára hena lennas. > sing-PRES-3SG:P-3SG:A child-AGT song-OBJ > `A child sings a song.' > > (2) Lennara hena. > sing-PRES-3SG:A child-AGT > `A child sings.' > > (3) Lenná lennas. > sing-PRES-3SG:P song-OBJ > `A song is sung.' > > (4) Lenna. > sing-PRES > `There is singing.' > > Yet, I call these "zero-agent" and "zero-patient" constructions > and avoid the terms "passive" and "antipassive" because I don't > think these can be properly called "verb voices", lacking any > kind of morphological marking on the verb (other than the > absence of agreement markers) or changes to the cases of the > nouns.
My Tairezazh does essentially the same. I've never thought of this as voices; indeed, the original reason for introducing it was getting rid of passives. A voice interpretation would be rather perverse, since the object of a subjectless verb can't be the subject of a coordinated verb, but can be the object of one. Andreas

Reply

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>