Inherently Passive Verbs
From: | Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...> |
Date: | Sunday, March 26, 2006, 21:17 |
Know how these things go, my question is "What is the anadewism of
inherently passive verbs," *not* whether they exist elsewhere. ;)
Compare the following two Asha'ille sentences, the first with a normal
active verb, and the second with a passive verb:
Arev en'i ne chifi. "I give a kitten."
Alv en'i ne chifi. "I am given a kitten."
(Where _en'i_ is the self, _ne_ precedes the object, and _chifi_ is "kitten".)
Are there other languages that have verbs whose subject is a patient,
not an agent, with no markings at all besides lexical choice of the
verb?
Searching through the archives, I came across mention of Hawaiian's
"loa'a" stative verbs:
Emaelivpeith David Peterson vek Mon, 8 Apr 2002 02:44:40 EDT kek:
> Also, there's the matter of loa'a verbs that are inherently passive and
> that you add a causative prefix to to make active. Compare:
>
> Pau ka hana iaia. (The work was finished by him.)
> Ho'opau 'oia ka hana. (He finished the work--ho'o is the causative.)
I found a PDF at
http://www.uatuahine.hawaii.edu/papa/haw452f05/Ano_Painu.pdf talking
about Hawaiian verbs. At first blush, this does seem to be a similar
phenomenon, but I otherwise have *zero* experience with Hawaiian. Can
anyone else comment?
As for using causatives, I hadn't thought of that, but it does seem to
fit naturally with my previous two examples. See the fourth example
below for a clear parallel with David's examples:
Arevteni ne chifi. "I am caused to give a kitten."
Alvteni ne chifi. "I am caused to be given a kitten."
Arevteni no ne chifi. "It causes me to give a kitten."
Alvteni no ne chifi. "It causes me to be given a kitten," "It
gives me a kitten."
As opposed to the simplier and unmarked:
Arevleni no ne chifi. "It gives me a kitten."
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com
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