LINGUIST List 13.1616

Thu Jun 6 2002

Qs: Unaccusative Passives, Consonant Harmony/Adults

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>



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Directory

  • Anja Wanner, Unaccusative Passives
  • Dan Everett, Consonant Harmony in Adult Speech

    Message 1: Unaccusative Passives

     Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2002 17:54:31 +0000
    From: Anja Wanner <awannerwisc.edu>
    Subject: Unaccusative Passives


    Dear linguists -

    Unaccusative verbs such as happen, disappear etc. cannot normally be passivized, since they do not have an external argument (Perlmutter 1978 etc.). However, there are sentences like [Thirty thousand people - a whole generation - were disappeared in seven years of military rule] in English or [Er ging nicht, er WURDE gegangen] (He didn't go, he WAS gone - meaning: He didn't quit his job, he was fired) in German, which are used to imply the existence of a causer. I would like to find out if this kind of (marked) "implicit agent unaccusative passive" also exists in other languages. Thanks for your help! anja

    Anja Wanner Assistant Professor, Dept. of English University of Wisconsin-Madison Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park Street Madison, WI 53706 http://mendota.english.wisc.edu/~awanner

    Message 2: Consonant Harmony in Adult Speech

     Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 15:55:36 -0300
    From: Dan Everett <dan_everettsil.org>
    Subject: Consonant Harmony in Adult Speech


    Folks,

    Does anyone know of clear cases of Consonant Harmony occurring in adult speech?

    Some researchers have observed CH in L1 acquisition data, but others have claimed that it cannot appear in adult speech. I reported on an apparent case in: 1985 'Syllable Weight, Sloppy Phonemes, and Channels in Pirah� Discourse,' In: Mary Niepokuj et.al. (eds.) Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 11, pp 408-416.

    In child language acquisition cases might look like: [mom] for German /Baum/ or [guk] for /buk/ 'book', etc. In Piraha it looks like ?apapai 'head' ~ ?a?a?ai 'head' (?=glottal); Kohoi 'name' ~ Kokoi, etc.

    I will post a summary (if there are any responses!).

    Best,

    Dan Everett