Talk:Antipassive voice

Request for expansion

This article needs real-world examples. I'm not sure whether these ergative languages have an antipassive voice, but suggestions would be: Euskera (Basque language), Hindi language, Georgian language, and Dyirbal language. The first is a language isolate, the second is Indo-European, and the last two have a very curious split ergativity. Also, it would be interesting to have statistics on how frequent this voice actually is, and what are its usages and connotations (pragmatics). --Pablo D. Flores 20:58, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Basque does have an antipassive voice. It changes the ergative subject to a absolutive one, but it does not delete the absolutive object, yet (so that both "logical" subject and object are in the same case).

• Normal ergative construction:

Gauza miragarriak ikhusi ditut (nik)

thing wonderful-PL-ABS see-PERF have-PRES-PL-I (I-ERG)

I have seen wonderful things

• Normal antipassive:

Gauza miragarriak ikhusirik nago / ikhusia naiz

thing wonderful-PL-ABS see-PERF-STAT am / see-PERF-ACT am

• I am seen wonderful things

In fact, virtually every Basque perfective participle (-i, -n, -tu) can be used both in ergative and antipassive constructions: active filma ikhusi dut / antipassive filma ikhusirik nago (both of them meaning "I have seen the film"), active Anhitzetan lagundu dut aita lanean / antipassive Aita lanean anhitzetan lagundua naiz ("I have often helped my father at work").

Theo, 2005-4-16

I don't get it: what's it for? What difference does it make semantically? 82.10.98.240 11:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I have added some Dyirbal examples to illustrate the function of the antipassive.83.76.168.75 05:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I have tried to incorporate your example into the article. Let me know if I got it wrong. --Jim Henry | Talk 20:16, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

What do you mean by "I am seen wonderful things"? Is that sentence grammatical? Also, you call it "Normal antipassive". Are there other kinds of antipassive in the language? Yu-hsien — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.251.170.152 (talk) 13:10, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

"He is telling the truth" -> "He is talking"

Is there a reason why the verb was changed? I think that although "He is telling" is ungrammatical, it is still better for understanding the effect of Antipassive. There could be a star ('*') before the translation and an extra comment in brackets like: (which is ungrammatical in English, as the verb 'tell' must have an object). 201.95.65.91 (talk) 23:57, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like a translation into English, where natural English wording uses one verb when there's an object and a different verb when there isn't; but since translation is not what's being illustrated, I've changed the verb to speaking, which works in both voices. Pi zero (talk) 11:22, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

incomplete

"may cast the clause as imperfective, inceptive, or potential" There is a link from this phrase to imperfective, but not to inceptive or potential. What are the definitions of "inceptive" and "potential" and what do they have to do with the meaning of the sentence? In a 2006 paper by Dave Mathewson, he suggests that these latter two categories, which have been taught time out of mind in connection with koine Greek, are useless and have no bearing on producing an accurate translation. Go back to the source of this phrase and find and provide the definition so that readers can see whether it's useful in understanding an anti-passive text. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 15:05, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

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introduction needs work

The first two bits of the introduction are repetitive. The examples in it belong in an "examples" section down in the body. 71.178.191.144 (talk) 13:12, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

definition

Point # 3 reads subjectively. What is the objective definition of whether a word in a sentence is "peripheral", which suggests that it is not important to the meaning of the sentence. How many of us throw objects into our sentences just to have more words in them? This sounds like something from an antiquated source. Antiquated grammarians like Gesenius are famous for using descriptives that have a pejorative nuance in them. 71.178.191.144 (talk) 13:16, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Function section example issue

In the Function section, the second Dyirbal example seems to repeat the ungrammatical sentence from the first example instead of giving the grammatical form with the absolutive form changing to dative as I believe is intended. Parquillian (talk) 21:34, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Puzzled by wording in passage on Dyirbal

The current text contains:

”A further purpose of antipassive construction is often to make certain arguments available as pivots for relativization, coordination of sentences, or similar constructions. For example, in Dyirbal the omitted argument in conjoined sentences must be in absolutive case. Thus, the following sentence is ungrammatical:

*baji

M-ABS

jaɽa

man-ABS

bani-ɲu

come-NFUT

balan

F-ABS

ɟuɡumbil

woman-ABS

buɽa-n

see-NFUT

*baji jaɽa bani-ɲu balan ɟuɡumbil buɽa-n

M-ABS man-ABS come-NFUT F-ABS woman-ABS see-NFUT

'The man came and saw the woman.'

In the conjoined sentence, the omitted argument (the man) would have to be in ergative case, being the agent of a transitive verb (to see). This is not allowed in Dyirbal. In order to make this sentence grammatical, the antipassive, which promotes the original ergative to absolutive and puts the former absolutive (the woman) into dative case has to be used:

baji

M-ABS

jaɽa

man-ABS

bani-ɲu

come-NFUT

baɡun

F-DAT

ɟuɡumbil-ɡu

woman-DAT

buɽal-ŋa-ɲu

see-ANTIP-NFUT

baji jaɽa bani-ɲu baɡun ɟuɡumbil-ɡu buɽal-ŋa-ɲu

M-ABS man-ABS come-NFUT F-DAT woman-DAT see-ANTIP-NFUT

'The man came and saw the woman.'

”

To me the following things in this text are unclear:

[1] The omitted argument in the second clause of the first Dyirbal sentence is “baji jaɽa”.

[2] It is, reportedly, in absolutive case.

=> Both stated conditions are met, yet the sentence is marked as ungrammatical.

[3] “In the conjoined sentence, the omitted argument (the man) would have to be in ergative case,”

=> Does “the conjoined sentence” refer to the first or to the second conjoined clause? (My understanding is that one sentence consists of one or multiple clauses.)

=> If it refers to the first one, there is contradiction, since “baji jaɽa” is not omitted there.

=> If it refers to the second one, there is contradiction, since an omitted argument can obviously not be in any case.

[4] What exactly is not allowed in a/the conjoined sentence: an (omitted) argument being in ergative case, or the agent of a transitive verb being in ergative case?

[5] “In order to make this sentence grammatical, the antipassive, which promotes the original ergative to absolutive and puts the former absolutive (the woman) into dative case has to be used”

=> Since there is no ergative in the first Dyirbal sentence, there is no original ergative either. So what is meant by “the original ergative”?

=> Since there are two former absolutives (“baji jaɽa” and “balan ɟuɡumbil”), why is only “the former absolutive (the woman) put into dative case and not also “baji jaɽa”? Redav (talk) 12:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

References