The passive voice in ancient Indo-European languages: inflection, derivation, periphrastic verb forms

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (s42-s2) ◽  
pp. 339-391
Author(s):  
Silvia Luraghi ◽  
Guglielmo Inglese ◽  
Daniel Kölligan
Keyword(s):  
Passive Voice ◽  
Middle Voice ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Inflectional Paradigms

Abstract The IE languages developed different strategies for the encoding of the passive function. In some language branches, the middle voice extended to the passive function to varying extents. In addition, dedicated derivational formations arose in a number of languages, such as the Greek -ē-/-thē- aorist and the Indo-Aryan -ya-presents. Periphrastic formations involving a verbal adjective or a participle are also widely attested, and played an important role in the building of the passive paradigm in e.g. Romance and Germanic languages. As the periphrastic passive is also attested in Hittite alongside passive use of the middle, both strategies seem to be equally ancient. Some minor strategies include lexical passives and the extensive lability of verbs. A survey of possible strategies provides evidence for the rise of a disparate number of morphemes and constructions, and for their ongoing incorporation into the inflectional paradigms (paradigmaticization) of given languages, thus adding to our knowledge about cross-linguistic sources of passive morphology and grammaticalization processes involved.

scholarly journals The development of Germanic analytical tenses

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Andriy Botsman ◽  
Olga Dmytruk ◽  
Tamara Kozlovska
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Germanic Languages

The stages that encompass the future tense development are singled out as discrete phenomena within the process of the Germanic language development. The Gothic verb system can serve as the background for the investigation of the tense transformations in question. The difficulties of tense examination in the Old Germanic languages were connected with some conceptions about the Indo-Iranian and Greek languages that used to dominate in the scientific circles for a long time. Those conceptions were based on Latin and Greek patterns and postulated the use of present, past and future tenses in all Indo-European languages. The above conceptions were ruined when the study of Tokharian and Hittite demonstrated the use of the present tense for the description of future actions. The idea of losing “the protolanguage inheritance” was proved wrong, and it was incorrect to transfer the complex tense system of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin to other Proto-Indo-European languages. The examination of the tense differentiation in Gothic (as the main source of the Old Germanic language) demonstrates that the Gothic infinitive functioned as a no-particular-time unit, while personal verb forms were involved in performing tense functions. The Gothic present tense verbs represented present and future tenses and no-particular-time phenomena. Some periphrastic forms containing preterite-present verbs with the infinitive occurred sporadically. The periphrastic forms correlated with Greek and Latin patterns of the same future tense meaning. The periphrastic future forms in Gothic often contained some modal shades of meaning. The Gothic present tense functioned as a colony-forming archi-unit and a pluripotential (temporal) precursor. The periphrastic Gothic future forms are recognised as a monopotential (temporal) precursor with some modal meaning. The key research method used in the present article is the comparative historical method. The authors viewed it as the most reliable and appropriate for the study of tense forms.

Bribri media tantum verbs and the rise of labile syntax

Linguistics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Pacchiarotti ◽  
Leonid Kulikov
Keyword(s):  
Passive Voice ◽  
Transitive Verb ◽  
Active Voice ◽  
Middle Voice ◽  
Small Subgroup ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Intransitive Verbs

Abstract In this article, we first show that the Bribri (Chibchan) middle voice suffix -r derives passive voice from active transitive and agentive intransitive verbs, as well as anticausative verbs from nominal and adjectival roots. Second, we focus on five media tantum verbs, i.e., forms that synchronically carry the -r suffix and have no counterpart without -r. Unlike most other verbs, these five forms are labile, i.e., they can occur in syntactically intransitive and transitive constructions with no (supra-)segmental change. After describing the valence patterns in which Bribri media tantum labile (MTL) verbs occur, we investigate whether: (i) their non-absolutive arguments behave like ergative phrases; and whether (ii) MTL verb forms in two-argument constructions behave like active voice transitive verb stems. Third, we outline a hitherto unnoticed diachronic path for the rise of lability in a small subgroup of Bribri media tantum verbs.

Episodic versus generic eventualities and nominals

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-482
Author(s):  
Meng-Chen Lee ◽  
Werner Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Specific Reference ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Bare Nouns ◽  
Nominal Declension ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Inflectional Paradigms

AbstractThis paper proposes an analysis of the DP structure of Chinese in comparison with German and other West Germanic languages, particularly English. The analysis is linked to sentence structure, particularly event structure of the respective languages and the relation between nominal classifiers and sentential tense. Chinese is a language without nominal declension; German is not as other Indo-European languages. Among the inflectional paradigms, German has retained from earlier periods, and developed further, the coding of topicality in terms of familiarity and anaphoricity. While Chinese shares with German clause syntactic topicality, it does so purely in terms of clause-early and clause-late word order. German, by contrast, involves specific positions in the serial middle field to code referential familiarity, anaphoricity, and, above all, weak versus strong referential weight to distinguish, among other functions, specific versus unspecific reference. The categories involved in coding such properties in German are determiners and the declensional morphology of attributes (‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ inflection providing specific reference). This paper investigates the regularities of weak and strong reference in Chinese. The discussion yields insight into the structural coding that Chinese provides instead of what is encoded in German in morphological terms on adjectival attributes and in terms determiners ((in)definite articles and bare nouns). In the course, the discussion around mass versus count nouns and the role of classifiers is brought up and newly evaluated on the basis of the new referential distinctions.

scholarly journals Germanic Preterite-Present Verbs and their Morphological and Semantic Peculiarities

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Andriy Botsman ◽  
Olga Dmytruk
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Characteristics ◽  
Morphological Features ◽  
The West ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Semantic Aspect

The purpose of this article is to give detailed description to all possible semantic and morphological features of Germanic preterite-present verbs. Some research has dealt with the problem of preterite-present present verbs; however, semantic and morphological functions of these verbs were studied only by singling out verb characteristics, peculiarities, potential possibilities in different Germanic languages without any alignment of the obtained results. There is little information available on preterite-present verbs within the west Germanic and North Germanic (Scandinavian) subgroups. Semantic aspect of these verbs was analysed by some scholars, but it is still unknown how these verbs were formed in other Indo-European languages (Baltic, Slavonic, Romantic). The contradicting point of the available research is how those verbs are reflected in Latin and Greek. In spite of the fact that preterite-present verbs were studied in detail in terms of phonological characteristics, their morphological and semantic peculiarities were not taken into account and compared. Special attention should be given to the functioning and correlation of phonological and morphological peculiarities of those verbs. This paper offers the results of a detailed and consistent analysis of phonological and morphological peculiarities of preterite-present verbs. The paper aims at determining the morphological characteristics of preterite-present verbs, which were formed under the influence of phonological processes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the connection of Germanic preterite-present verbs with possible sources in other Indo-European languages. The authors define a set of characteristics peculiar of preterite-present verbs semantics. The functions of these verbs are analysed in detail. The authors attempt to analyse the nature of these verbs. The attention is paid to the functions of preterite- present verbs not only in the Germanic languages, but in other Indo-European languages, too. The comparative historical method is used here as the main one. The authors see this valid way of investigation as reliable and appropriate for the preterite-present verb analysis.

The expression of ‘inferentiality’ in Abkhaz

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. G. Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
European Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Turkic Languages ◽  
Formal Relation

In Comrie (1976: 108) we read: ‘Several languages have special inferential verb forms, to indicate that the speaker is reporting some event that he has not himself witnessed, but about whose occurrence he has learnt at second hand (though without, incidentally, necessarily casting doubt on the reliability of the information)’. Two pages later Comrie writes follows:Serebrennikov (1960: 66) lists the following languages known to him where there is a close formal relation, down to identity, between the expression of perfect and inferential meaning: Turkic languages: the Uralic languages Nenets (Yurak-Samoyed), Finnish, Estonian, Man (Cheremis), Komi (Zyryan), Udmurt (Votyak), Mańśi (Vogul); Georgian; and the Indo-European languages Latvian, Bulgarian, and Albanian.

scholarly journals Gender Resolution in Croatian, Slavic and Proto-Indo-European

Fluminensia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-29
Author(s):  
Ranko Matasović
Keyword(s):  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Resolution Rule ◽  
The Common ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Masculine Gender

This paper deals with the origin and development of the gender resolution rule according to which the predicate adjective agrees with the masculine antecedent when there is agreement with a conjunction of subjects at least one of which denotes a male person. Apart from Croatian, such a rule exists (or existed) in the other Slavic languages, as well as in Baltic languages, so it can safely be posited for Proto-Slavic and Proto-Balto-Slavic. We further show that most contemporary and ancient Indo-European languages had such a gender resolution rule. Where such a rule does not exist (as in Germanic languages), there is a plausible historical explanation. In Hittite, which preserves the most ancient gender system of Indo-European (with only common and neuter genders, and no feminine gender), the default agreement is with the common gender noun. Recent advances in our understanding of the development of gender in Indo-European allow us to show that the rule taking the masculine as the default gender has developed from the rule taking the common gender as default. This is because the morphemes showing gender agreement on adjectives and pronouns of the masculine gender have developed from Early Proto-Indo-European morphemes expressing the common gender.

scholarly journals Universal and particular in morphological processing: Evidence from Hebrew

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 1125-1133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Farhy ◽  
João Veríssimo ◽  
Harald Clahsen
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Masked Priming ◽  
Word Processor ◽  
Morphological Processing ◽  
Root Decomposition ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Open Class

Do properties of individual languages shape the mechanisms by which they are processed? By virtue of their non-concatenative morphological structure, the recognition of complex words in Semitic languages has been argued to rely strongly on morphological information and on decomposition into root and pattern constituents. Here, we report results from a masked priming experiment in Hebrew in which we contrasted verb forms belonging to two morphological classes, Paal and Piel, which display similar properties, but crucially differ on whether they are extended to novel verbs. Verbs from the open-class Piel elicited familiar root priming effects, but verbs from the closed-class Paal did not. Our findings indicate that, similarly to other (e.g., Indo-European) languages, down-to-the-root decomposition in Hebrew does not apply to stems of non-productive verbal classes. We conclude that the Semitic word processor is less unique than previously thought: Although it operates on morphological units that are combined in a non-linear way, it engages the same universal mechanisms of storage and computation as those seen in other languages.

scholarly journals What’s in the Middle?

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Horrocks
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Sensu Stricto ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Morphological Form ◽  
Middle Voice ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Self Interest

It has long been taken for granted in reference works, grammars and elementary introductions that Ancient Greek had three grammatical voices, active, passive and middle. Yet scholars have always had great difficulty in characterising the middle voice in a straightforward and convincing way, and language learners are often perplexed to find that most of the middles they find in texts fail to exemplify the function, usually involving some notion of self interest, that is typically ascribed to this voice. This article therefore re-examines the Ancient Greek middle, both through the lens of a general survey of “middle voice” functions across languages, and through the analysis of all the medio-passive verb forms attested in Book 1 of Plato’s Republic.  The principal observations are that Ancient Greek middles do not represent a regular pattern of usage either from a typological point of view or as employed specifically in Republic 1 (the database is in fact partly extended to other works). Accordingly, the main conclusion is that the Ancient Greek middle is not a grammatical voice sensu stricto, i.e. a regular syntactic alternation applying to all verbs with a given set of properties and expressed by a regular morphological form with a predictable semantic function. Rather, it appears to be a convenient collective name for a large set of “autonomous” verb forms that are either clearly deponent (i.e., have no active counterparts) or that have been lexicalised in a specialised meaning vis-à-vis their supposed active counterparts (i.e., are also deponents in practice, despite appearances). In all probability, therefore, medio-passive morphology, whatever it once represented in terms of function, was recharacterised prehistorically as “passive” morphology, leaving a residue of verbs exhibiting forms with non-passive functions. Presumably, these survived as “middles” only because they had no active counterparts or had been assigned innovative meanings that distinguished them from any formally related actives.

scholarly journals К вопросу о страдательном залоге в языках, распространенных на берегу Балтийского моря, с акцентом на севернорусском диалекте

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-382
Author(s):  
Арпад Орос
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
The North ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Hanseatic League ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Russian Dialect ◽  
Intransitive Verbs

The two characteristics of the passive voice found in the North Russian dialect and in other Circum-Baltic languages, the accusative case of the patient or theme as an argument of a verb with passive morphology and intransitive verbs passivized raise a number of related questions. The author of the present paper explores the issues under discussion from an areal-historical perspective, concluding that the aforementioned languages have a tendency for the agent to be the same element as the subject and the patient or theme to be the same element as the (direct) object of the sentence. In the North Russian dialect, we can see an example where the above fact holds true irrespective of whether the verb has an active or a passive morphology as the theme of the sentence assumes the accusative case regardless of whether it is an argument of a verb in the active or in the passive voice.The question as to what lexical elements can function as subjects is itself interesting. Moreover, there seems to be a correlation between what level of abstraction the syntactic category of subject has reached in a language and the existence of a pure passive mean- ing. The less abstract the category of subject is, as in case of Circum-Baltic languages, the farther structures with a passive morphology seem to be from a pure passive meaning. In languages such as English, however, where virtually any noun can function as a subject, there seems to be a pure passive meaning and there is only one morphological way of form- ing passive sentences.The nature of linguistic similarities found in genetically less related languages spoken in the same area has been given a number of varied accounts. The most salient of them ap- pears to be B. Drinka’s explanation based on the influence of Western European languages on ones spoken in the East of the area where once the Hanseatic League existed in the middle ages and I. Seržant’s theory concerning the foregrounding of the agent as passive structures with a stative interpretation gradually assumed a dynamic one.In fact, participles in the North Russian dialect ending in -n / -t can express a dynam- ic, that is, eventive interpretation with a perfect meaning and can even co-occur with the -sja / -s’ postfix, the latter phenomenon being absolutely unimaginable in Standard Russian, where the two affixes are in complementary distribution. The author assumes that the topic should be studied from the perspective of sociology and cultural anthropology as well since linguistic similarities and differences often reflect similarities and differences in thinking beyond the realm of linguistics.

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