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Passive to intransitive ...

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Sunday, April 29, 2001, 19:47
Well, I had a little I idea that I thought was pretty nice; Tairezazh's
ancestor language Classical Klaish had an inflected passive fromed with the
ending _-aza_. This passive fell out of use in the Tairezazh branch*, being
replaced by sentences without explicit subject (like replacing "He was seen"
with "Saw him"). Now I thought I'd have some fossilized forms with slightly
changed meaning. Eg, CK _téshaza_ "is seen" would yield T _teshaz_, but the
later would not any longer be a inflected form of the verb _téshe_>_tesh_
"see(s)", but rather a distinct intransitive verb "look(s)" (as in "She
looks good").

Now the question is, is there any precedent for a such development in any
natlang any of you know of?

                                                   Andreas

* I've not yet decided whether the passive will survive in the other main
branch, Steianzh. If it did, it'd take the form _-ez_ and probably require
the instrumental case being kept. But the instumental ending _-î´ja_ should
end up as _-e_ in Steianzh - identical to the possessive. Hm. Could be
interesting ...
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Muke Tever <alrivera@...>