Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-01T11:09:36.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The syntactic construction of two non-active Voices: Passive and middle1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2011

ARTEMIS ALEXIADOU  and
EDIT DORON
ARTEMIS ALEXIADOU*
Affiliation:
Universität Stuttgart
EDIT DORON*
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
*
Authors' addresses: (Alexiadou) Institut für Linguistik: Anglistik, Universität Stuttgart, Keplerstr. 17, 70174 Stuttgart, Germany[email protected]
(Doron) Linguistics Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The paper offers a theoretical characterization of the middle Voice as distinct from the passive Voice, and addresses the cross-linguistic morphological variation in realizing these two non-active Voices in different classes of languages, represented by Hebrew, Greek and English. The two non-active Voices are the morphological realization of two distinct syntactic Voice heads generating middle and passive clauses respectively. The former are cross-linguistically interpreted as (i) anticausative, (ii) reflexive (and reciprocal), (iii) dispositional middle, and (iv) medio-passive, which is distinct from passive. This variation in the interpretation of the middle Voice reflects different properties of the root rather than the application of four different lexical rules postulated by lexicalist theories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 1 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

We are grateful to two anonymous JL referees and the editors for comments and suggestions. We also thank the audiences of the Thirtieth Annual Colloquium of GLOW, the University of Tromsø, April 2007, and the Colloquium of the English Department, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, May 2007. For their insightful comments we would like to thank in particular Anita Mittwoch, Malka Rappaport Hovav, and Florian Schäfer. Alexiadou's research was supported by a DFG grant to the project B6 ‘Underspecification in Voice systems and the syntax–morphology interface’ of the Collaborative Research Center 732 Incremental Specification in Context at the Universität Stuttgart. Doron's research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation grant #1157/10.

References

REFERENCES

Alexiadou, Artemis. To appear. Non-canonical passives revisited: Parameters of non-active Voice. Linguistics.Google Scholar
Alexiadou, Artemis & Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2004. Voice morphology in the causative–inchoative alternation: Evidence for a non unified structural analysis of unaccusatives. In Alexiadou, et al. (eds.), 115–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexiadou, Artemis & Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2009. Agent, causer and instrument PPs in Greek: Implications for verbal structure. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 57, 1–16.Google Scholar
Alexiadou, Artemis, Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Schäfer, Florian. 2006. The properties of anticausatives crosslinguistically. In Frascarelli, Mara (ed.), Phases of interpretation, 187–212. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Everaert, Martin. 1999. Towards a more complete typology of anaphoric expressions. Linguistic Inquiry 30, 97–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asher, R. E. & Kumari, T. C.. 1997. Malayalam. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark, Johnson, Kyle & Roberts, Ian. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 219–251.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 2005. The normal course of events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit & Grodzinsky, Yosef. 1986. Syntactic cliticization and lexical cliticization: The case of Hebrew dative clitics. In Borer, Hagit (ed.), The syntax of pronominal clitics, 175–217. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 1989. A semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences. Ms., Cornell University. [Published in Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou & Martin Everaert (eds.), The unaccusativity puzzle, 22–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.]Google Scholar
Condoravdi, Cleo. 1989. The middle: Where semantics and morphology meet. MIT Working papers in Linguistics 11, 18–30.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 1994. Voice: Beyond control and affectedness. In Fox, & Hopper, (eds.), 89–117.Google Scholar
Doron, Edit. 2003. Agency and Voice: The semantics of the Semitic templates. Natural Language Semantics 11, 1–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Embick, David. 1998. Voice systems and the syntax–morphology interface. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 32, 41–72.Google Scholar
Fagan, Sarah. 1992. The syntax and semantics of Middle constructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara & Hopper, Paul J. (eds.). 1995. Voice: Form and function. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Geniušienė, Emma. 1987. The typology of reflexives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Ken & Samuel, Jay Keyser. 1993a. On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In Hale, & Keyser, (eds.), 53–109.Google Scholar
Ken, Hale & Jay Keyser, Samuel (eds.). 1993b. The view from Building 20: Essays in honor of Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Marantz, Alec. 1993. Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Hale, & Keyser, (eds.), 111–176.Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi. 2007. External arguments: On the independence of Voice and v. Presented at GLOW, April 2007, Tromso.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1990. The grammaticalization of passive morphology. Studies in Language 14, 25–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higginbotham, James. 1985. On semantics. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 547–593.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56, 251–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joseph, Brian & Philippaki-Warburton, Irene. 1987. Modern Greek. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Kallulli, Dalina. 2006. Passive as a feature-suppression operation. In Abraham, Werner & Leisiö, Larisa (eds.), Passivization and typology: Form and function, 442–460. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, Ingrid. 2001. Medium: Eine Studie zur Verbsemantik. Habilitationsschrift, University of Düsseldorf.Google Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The Middle Voice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne. 1994. Middle Voice, transitivity, and the elaboration of events. In Fox, & Hopper, (eds.), 179–230.Google Scholar
Khan, Geoffrey. 2008. The Neo-Aramaic dialect of Barwar, vol. 1: Grammar. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klaiman, M. H. 1991. Grammatical Voice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Klaiman, M. H. 1992. Middle verbs, reflexive Middle constructions and Middle Voice. Foundations of Language 16, 35–61.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 1994. The event argument and the semantics of Voice. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 2005. Building resultatives. In Maienborn, Claudia & Wöllstein, Angelika (eds.), Event arguments: Foundations and applications, 177–212. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laskaratou, Chryssoula & Philippaki-Warburton, Irene. 1984. Lexical vs. transformational passives in Modern Greek. Glossologia 2–3, 99–109.Google Scholar
Lavidas, Nikolaos & Papangeli, Dimitra. 2007. Deponency in the diachrony of Greek. In Baerman, Matthew, Corbett, Gerville G., Brown, Dunstan & Hippisley, Andrew (eds.), Deponency and morphological mismatches, 97–126. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lekakou, Marika. 2005. In the middle. Somewhat elevated. The semantics of Middles and its crosslinguistic realization. Ph.D. dissertation, University College London.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth & Hovav, Malka Rappaport. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax – lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Manney, Linda. 2000. Middle Voice in Modern Greek: Meaning and function of an inflectional category. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don't try a morphological analysis in the privacy of you own lexicon. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4, 201–225.Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 2005. Objects out of the lexicon: Objects as event. Presented at the University of Vienna.Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 2008. An asymmetry in voice mismatches in VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping. Linguistic Inquiry 39.1, 169–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Johanna, Peterson, David A. & Barnes, Jonathan. 2004. Transitivizing and detransitivizing languages. Linguistic Typology 8, 149–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 1995. Zero syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Philippaki-Warburton, Irene. 1970. On the verb in Modern Greek. Ms., Indiana University.Google Scholar
Philippaki-Warburton, Irene. 1975. The passive in English and Greek. Foundations of Language 13, 563–578.Google Scholar
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2002. Introducing arguments. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. [Published as Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 49, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.]Google Scholar
Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon: A first phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 2002. The Theta system – an overview. Theoretical Linguistics 28.3, 229–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya & Siloni, Tal. 2005. The Lexicon–Syntax parameter: Reflexivization and other arity operations. Linguistic Inquiry 36, 389–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivero, María-Luisa. 1992. Adverb incorporation and the syntax of adverbs in Modern Greek. Linguistics and Philosophy 15, 289–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schäfer, Florian. 2008. The syntax of (anti-)causatives: External arguments in change-of-state contexts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schäfer, Florian. To appear. Two types of external argument licensing: The case of causers. Studia Linguistica.Google Scholar
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 2006. On the conceptual framework for Voice phenomena. Linguistics 44.2, 217–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The passive: A comparative linguistic analysis. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Sigurðsson, Halldor. 1989. Verbal syntax and case in Icelandic. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Lund.Google Scholar
Sioupi, Athina. 1998. Middle Voice structures: A comparative study of Greek versus German. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Athens. [In Greek]Google Scholar
Theophanopoulou-Kontou, Dimitra. 1983. Patient vs. non-patient orientation of the action and the Voice distinction in Greek. Glossologia 2–3, 75–90.Google Scholar
Theophanopoulou-Kontou, Dimitra. 2000. -O/-me alternations in MG patient-oriented constructions: Anticausatives and passives. Studies in Greek Linguistics 20, 146–157.Google Scholar
Tsimpli, Ianthi Maria. 1989. On the properties of the passive affix in Modern Greek. UCL Working papers in Linguistics 1, 235–260.Google Scholar
Tsimpli, Ianthi Maria. 2006. The acquisition of voice and transitivity alternations in Greek as native and second language. In Unsworth, Sharon, Parodi, Teresa, Sorace, Antonella & Young-Scholten, Martha (eds.), Paths of development in L1 and L2 acquisition, 15–55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zombolou, Katerina. 2004. Verbal alternations in Greek: A semantic approach. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Reading.Google Scholar