Summary Details
| Query: |
Passives with object agreement
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| Author: | Mark Donohue | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Syntax
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| Language Family: |
Niger-Congo
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| Summary: |
A few weeks ago, which in my personal chronology is one major logic
board failure in my computer ago, I posted a query about the occurrence of complex predicates in which the one verb form appears with both passive morphology and object-agreement marking, for two different arguments (either a base ditransitive, or a derived verb). I cited some examples from Pancana, an Austronesian language from Southeast Sulawesi, which *almost* shows this pattern, and asked if anyone knew of any more languages that did this, less ambiguously (Linguist 14.1833). It is indeed possible for a language to permit object marking when the clause is passive, as long as were talking about a different object. Examples come from KiChaga, Haya and Runyambo. Swahili also allows the object marking + passive on the one verb, but under strict restrictions. The logic board crash unfortunately destroyed the example I was so kindly sent, but it does happen. KiChaga (tone marks omitted) (Bresnan and Moshi 1990) M-ka n-a-i-ki-lyi-o 1-wife FOC-1S-PR-7O-eat-APPL-PASS The wife is being [benefitted/adversely affected] by someones eating it. Runyambo (Rugemalira 1993: 229) omw?n? a-ka-bi-reet-er-w-? omus?ija child she-PAST-them-bring-APPL-PASS-FV man the child was brought them by a man The following Haya example is a base-ditransitive verb, applicativised (which makes for four core arguments), and then passivised; that leaves room for two object prefixes: Haya omwaan a-ka-ga-ba-siig-il-w-a Kato child he-P3-it-them-smear-APPL-PASS-Kato the child was smeared oil for them by Kato. All interesting, and all Bantu. Id be curious to see if this happens anywhere else: so far weve got multiple Bantu attestations, and some near-misses in Austronesian. Any other takers? Thanks to Alex Alsina and the now anonymous Swahili-information giver for references and examples. References: Bresnan, Joan, and Lioba Moshi. 1990. Object asymmetries in comparative Bantu syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 147-185. Duranti, Alessandro and Ernest Rugwa Byarushengo. 1977. On the notion of ''direct object''. In E.R. Byarushengo, A Duranti, and L.M. Hyman, eds., Haya grammatical structure (Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics No. 6): 45-71. Rugemalira, Josephat M. 1993. Bantu multiple object constructions. Linguistic Analysis 23 (3-4): 226-252. -Mark Donohue Language-Family: Niger-Congo; Code: NC |
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| LL Issue: | 8.675 | |
| Date Posted: | 07-May-1997 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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