Re: Inherently Passive Verbs

Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> Know how these things go, my question is "What is the anadewism of
> inherently passive verbs," *not* whether they exist elsewhere. ;)
>
> 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.)
>
There was for a long time debate about the "passivity" of Malay/Indonesian
"verbs" (19th/early-20th C), and perhaps by extension Austronesian langs.
generally. It might have been better argued in terms of stative vs. active,
which is how I tend to view it:

kerja-nya (sudah) selesai
work-the (already=perf.) finished "The work is/has been finished"

*saya (sdh) selesai (could only mean "I'm finished, over with" and would
probably be considered odd if not nonsense by a native speaker.

saya (sdh) me-nyelesai-kan kerjanya (meng+s.. > meny-)
I   ....  act- base  caus.  the work "I (have) finished the work"

OTOH, kapal (sdh) sampai 'the ship (has) arrived)' but also saya sdh.sampai
'I (have) arrived'

Quite a few "verbs" can behave like this; yet others are clearly
active/transitive or intransitive. "Beri" 'give' in correct speech requires
either the meng- (active) or di- (passive) prefix. (Colloq. speech can drop
the meng- pfx.-- ia beri uang kepadamu "he'll give money to you'-- but not
the di- pfx.)

My impression of Fijian (from reading the dictionary) is that some
stative/adjectival forms can be essentially passive (like 'finished') and
require some prefix/suffix to make them active.