Re: What would you call this?

Quoting "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>:

> Well, only if it changes the relations of the verb.  Can you elide
> arguments of the verb without so changing the grammatical relations?
> If so, then this is no passive.
This reminds me of a somewhat confused (on my part at least!) discussion of
antipassives we had some time back.

Anyway, since then Altaii has acquired two verb forms I label "passive"
and "antipassive". The thing has rigid SOV syntax, so we get sentences like
this:

Yza eze reimazo
yza eze reim -azo
3f  3m  see  PAST
"She saw him"

As seen, only WO tells us that _yza_ is subject and _eze_ object - _eze yza
reimazo_ means "he saw her". Now, we can drop either argument, provided we
supply the appropriate suffix on the verb:

Yza reimolazo
yza reim     -ol      -azo
3f  see      PASSIVE  PAST
"She saw"

Eze reimeizazo
eze reim     -eiz        -azo
3m  contact  ANTIPASSIVE PAST
"He was seen"

Now, my "gut feeling" is that neither of these suffixes is changing any
valences - they're only telling which argument has got dropped, the other
being found in its normal place. If so, I guess they shouldn't properly be
called "passive" and "antipassive", altho' I'm at a loss as what else to call
them.

How would you analyze these?

                                                         Andreas

PS Altaii word of the day; Maralandzhinistaiz "neotraditionalism".

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