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Re: Copula

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Tuesday, March 20, 2007, 14:56
Hi!

R A Brown writes:
> Jeff Rollin wrote: > [snip] > > I suspect there are languages that have no passive but have free word > > order, since the point of a passive is to make an object > > topic-prominent. > > Latin certainly had free word order and could, and quite often did, > make the object topic-prominent by shifting to the front. Indeed, > German, which has less free word order, can and does do the same - > fronting the object before the main verb which must occupy 2nd > position. > > But both languages find a passive useful - particularly, of course, > where the agent is unimportant or unknown. >...
I read that Hungarian (which is nom-acc) has more or less lost its passive voice. At least all registers but formal Hungarian. Hungarian uses the active with a dummy 3rd person subject when other langs would use the passive ('They killed him.' = 'He was killed.'). But Hungarian *had* a passive and who knows -- maybe the current loss is just a transition to a new formation. No precise idea about Mandarin or other Modern Chinese langs, but I think at least Ancient Chinese comes close: IIRC, it has a passive, but can use the syntactic active to express passive, too (unfortunately no example off my head in Chinese, but using English, I read 'Mr. Zhang was beheaded' in Ancient Chinese was something like 'Zhang Mr. behead.' (no offence Mr. Zhang -- another Zhang! :-)). In contranst, German seems to like the passive so much that a new 'indirect passive' was established to promote the indirect object to subject position: active voice: Der Arzt zieht mir den Zahn. 'The=NOM doctor extracts me=DAT the=ACC tooth.' passive voice: Der Zahn wird mir gezogen. 'The=NOM tooth becomes me=DAT pulled.' indirect passive voice: Ich kriege den Zahn gezogen. 'I=NOM get the=ACC tooth pulled.' **Henrik