Toward a new theory of passivization in romance / James Stewart Monk.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Microformat

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Monk, James Stewart.

Contributor:

Esposito, Anthony P., advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--Romance languages.

Romance languages--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--Romance languages.

Romance languages--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

viii, 274 pages ; 29 cm

Production:

1999.

Summary:

This dissertation employs a functional approach to describe the diachronic development of passivization in Romance. Chapter I offers a history of the term "passive voice," tracing a theoretical trajectory for the treatment of the passive from the Tekhne Grammatike of Dionysius Thrax to recent doctoral dissertations on the passive of a Romance language.

The dissertation assumes the challenge of integrating the methodologies of contrastive and historical linguistics. Thus, Chapter II concludes with a contrastive pragmaphilological analysis of the prologue of the thirteenth-century Latin treatise Viridarium consolationis and three fifteenth-century translations in Old Spanish, Old Portuguese, and Old Italian. As a preliminary conclusion, I reject the notion of the passive as a unitary phenomenon, be it morphological, syntactic, or semantic.

Parting from a summary of the phonological and morphological arguments made to characterize the development of the Romance passive, Chapter III discusses the development of the passive from Classical to Late Latin, focusing on the loss of the synthetic (flexional) passive paradigm. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the functional syntactic work done on the CL, LL, and Early Romance passives.

The final chapter offers a contrastive pragmaphilological analysis of three medieval and early modern Romance translations of the Actus Apostolorum of St. Jerome's Vulgate Bible. I used the OSp Hechos de los Apostoles from MS Escurialense I-I-6, the OPt Actos dos Apostolos in Alcobaca Codex 282, and Lefevre d'Etaples' Actes des Apostres from his MidFr Nouveau Testament.

The general conclusion of this functional study of the Romance passive is that the choice of active or passive perspective is strongly influenced by the discourse cohesiveness among the entities involved in the state of affairs expressed. The loss of the CL synthetic passive paradigm, including the deponent verbs, was a symptom of the increased association of active morphology with Agent-related properties and of passive morphology with Patient-related properties. Moreover, the choice to present a state of affairs in the active perspective where a passive perspective was acceptable is supported by (1) the paratactic use of coordinating conjunctions (et..et..et), (2) nearby lexical clues, and (3) indefinite and impersonal grammatical subjects.

Notes:

Adviser: Anthony P. Esposito.

Thesis (Ph.D. in Romance Languages) -- University of Pennsylvania, 1999.

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

University Microfilms order no.: 99-26172.

OCLC:

244970666