Re: Antipassives

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> If you mean that nominative languages always have a passive voice, it may
> be a an exaggerated claim, but it's true that I don't know of any
> nominative language without a passive voice (even Japanese as one). But I'm
> pretty sure you can find examples (Mandarin maybe?).
Randy LaPolla has argued convincingly (at least he convinced me :-) )
that in Chinese the whole concept of "S, A, and P" makes no sense, that
Chinese is neither accusative nor ergative nor active, and that case roles
are assigned on a purely pragmatic basis.

In particular, "The man-NOM dropped the melon-ACC and burst" has
to mean that the man burst, in an accusative language; "the man-ERG
hit the wall-ABS and shouted" has to mean that the wall shouted, in a
(syntactically) ergative language.  Chinese-speakers can't believe that
other people are *forced* to interpret these sentences thus: they take
their literal equivalents to mean, naturally enough, that the melon
burst and the man shouted.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on
the shoulders of giants."
        --Isaac Newton

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