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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

Replies

Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>