Re: Sensible passives (was: confession: roots)

Raymond Brown wrote:
>Rather what happens to the child is passive as in sensible language:
>na:scitur = s/he is being born
>etc.
>
>>and thus would not
>>*need* a passive.  What's the passive of "die"?  :-)
>
>In a sensible language like Latin "to die" is passive  :-)
>
>mori:tur = s/he is dying>
Is there any  natlang in which the basic verb is transitive {BORN}[agt
(pat)]-- "Ethel BORN-ed" = Ethel had a baby, Ethel gave birth
"Ethel BORN-ed Seymour" = E. gave birth to S. with passive "Seymour
be-BORN-ed by Ethel" = S. was born to/of Ethel, S. was given birth to by
Ethel--

as opposed to the more common {BORN}[pat (agt? ben?)]-- "Seymour was born" ~
"Seymour was born ([to/of]) Ethel" (I'm unsure of Ethel's
semantico-grammatical role) vs, "Ethel CAUS-BECOME-BORN-ed Seymour" -- where
{BORN} with both pat and agt/ben has to be a derived form (as in Indonesian
or Kash) or separate lexical item/paraphrase (Engl. bear, give birth to,
Span. parir, dal al mundo etc.-- these can of course be passivized).
(Presumably an ergative language could get by with {BORN}[abs (erg)] as Nik
Taylor showed.)


Indonesian:  lahir 'be born' > melahirkan 'give birth to', dilahirkan
(passive)

Same with die/kill-- with the added complication that there are many ways of
dying and killing, which might need to be specified.
Indonesian mati 'dead' is a little impolite for humans, Arab. wafat is
preferred, rather like 'deceased, passed away, etc.' for us.  Caus. matikan
is more often used figuratively, 'to extinguish, turn off, turn out;
generally, stop the operation of s.t.'; you could probably matikan a battery
or animal, maybe a criminal.

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