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Robert Forkel edited this page Jun 30, 2021 · 25 revisions

Is there a morphological antipassive marked on the lexical verb?

Summary

An antipassive marker detransitivizes verbs by removing the P argument or realizing it as an oblique argument. In a construction with ergative alignment, this means that the A argument of a transitive clause is encoded as the S argument in a corresponding antipassive clause. An antipassive marker often also has other detransitivizing functions, such as reflexivization, reciprocal, passive, or anticausative. In practice, this feature targets any intransitivising marker that is not, or not only, a reflexive, reciprocal, passive, or anticausative marker. This question targets productive phonologically bound antipassive markers on lexical verbs, as well as reduplication. Zero-marking or the removal of a transitivizing marker is not sufficient for a 1. Anything that happens with auxiliaries is irrelevant here. If the antipassive marker is only applied in a limited set of probably lexicalized items, it does not trigger 1.

Procedure

  1. Code 1 if a source mentions a phonologically bound morpheme to mark antipassive clauses.
  2. Code 1 if there is no information on phonological (in)dependence but the relevant antipassive marker is orthographically bound to the verb. Add a comment that your analysis is based on orthography.
  3. Code 1 if you identify a phonologically bound antipassive marker in the examples/texts provided in a source.
  4. Code 0 if a source mentions that there is no antipassive.
  5. Code 0 if a source mentions a phonologically free antipassive marker or other means of marking antipassives, but not one that is phonologically bound to the verb
  6. Code 0 if a grammar treats other valency changing operations in considerable depth but does not mention antipassive constructions.
  7. Code ? if there are examples that contain a potential antipassive construction but their analysis remains inconclusive.
  8. Code ? if there are no sources treating valency changing operations in the language or if treatment of them is very limited.

Examples

Kuku Yalanji (ISO 639-3: gvn, Glottolog: kuku1273)

Kuku Yalanji has ergative alignment of case marking on nouns. It also has an antipassive suffix, -ji. In the active clause below, the A argument (‘the man’) is marked with ergative case. In the antipassive clause, it is coded with absolutive case, like an S argument. The former absolutive argument (P) is coded as a location in the antipassive clause. Kuku Yalanji is coded 1.

Note that the alignment pattern of case marking is accusative for pronouns, so non-pronominal A arguments are marked with ergative case, while pronominal A arguments are marked with nominative case.

a. Active clause:
   nyulu      dingkar-angka    minya        nuka-ny
   3SG.NOM(A) man-ERG:PT(A)    meat.ABS(P)  eat-PST
   ‘The man ate meat.’ (Patz 2002: 152)

b. Antipassive clause:
   nyulu       dingkar      minya-nga    nuka-ji-ny
   3SG.NOM(S)  man.ABS(S)   meat-LOC     eat-ANTIP-PST
   ‘The man had a good feed of meat (he wasted nothing.)’ (Patz 2002: 152)

(Abbreviations: PT potent case)

At the same time, the antipassive marker in Kuku Yalanji exemplifies how such markers often also fulfill other detransitivizing functions in languages such as passivization.

c. Passive clause:
   warru             (yaburr-undu)   bayka-ji-ny
   young.man.ABS(S)  (shark-LOC:PT)  bite-PASS-PST
   ‘The young man was bitten (by a shark).’ (Patz 2002: 148)

(Abbreviations: PT potent case)

Cilubà (ISO 639-3: abc, Glottolog: luba1249)

Cilubà is an example of a language with an antipassive marker, -angan, but without ergative flagging or indexing alignment. One could call the language predominantly accusative, since that is the alignment of the indexes on verbs. The typical function of the antipassive in Cilubà is to indicate a non-punctual action (e.g. a custom or habit) by which a non-identifiable patient is affected. Or by which various patients, the identity of which is not immediately relevant in the discourse situation, are affected (Dom, Bostoen & Segerer 2015). Cilubà is coded 1.

a. Active:
   Mùsàlaayì    udi     ùlua          mulwishì
   CL1:soldier  CL1:PRS CL1:fight:FV  CL1:enemy
   ‘The soldier who is fighting the enemy.’ (Dom et al. 2015: 355)

b. Antipassive:
   Mùsàlaayì     ydi      ùlu-angan-a         mu         cialu              cìà      mvità
   CL1:soldier   CL1:PRS  CL1:fight-ANTIP-FV  LOC.CL18   CL7:meeting.place  CL7:CON  CL:war
   ‘The soldier who is fighting (someone) on the battlefield…’ (Dom et al. 2015: 355)

(Abbreviations: CL nominal class, FV final vowel, CON connective)

Further reading

Cooreman, Ann. 1994. A functional typology of antipassives. In Barbara A. Fox & Paul J. Hopper (eds), *Voice: Form and function, 49–88. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Heaton, Raina. 2020. Antipassives in crosslinguistic perspective. Annual Review of Linguistics 6(1). 131–153.

Janic, Katarzyna. 2013. L’antipassif dans les langues accusatives. Lyon: Université Lumière Lyon 2. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Polinsky, Maria. 2013. Antipassive constructions. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Polinsky, Maria. 2017. Antipassive. In Jessica Coon, Diane Massam & Lisa DeMena Travis (eds), The Oxford handbook of ergativity, 308–331. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zúñiga, Fernando & Seppo Kittilä. 2019. Grammatical voice. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

Dom, Sebastian, Guillaume Segerer & Koen Bostoen. 2015. Antipassive/associative polysemy in Cilubà (Bantu, L31a). Studies in Language 39. 354–385.

Patz, Elisabeth. 2002. A grammar of the Kuku Yalanji language of North Queensland. (Pacific Linguistics, 527.) Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

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