Demoting the agent : passive, middle, and other voice phenomena / edited by Benjamin Lyngfelt, Torgrim Solstad.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Solstad, Torgrim.

Lyngfelt, Benjamin.

Series:

Linguistik aktuell ; v. 96.

Linguistik aktuell, 0166-0829 ; v. 96

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Voice.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax.

Physical Description:

x, 333 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : J Benjamins, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Passives, middles, and other voice phenomena are issues at the core of modern linguistic research. This volume brings together different perspectives on voice different theoretical viewpoints, different languages, and different kinds of voice phenomena. The eleven articles each make a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion, offering new data, new analyses, and bringing new light to long-standing issues. In combination, they present a multi-faceted and yet coherent picture of the topics at hand.

Contents:

Demoting the Agent

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of contents

List of contributors

Preface

Perspectives on demotion

1. Background

2. Between active and passive

3. S-verbs and reflexives in Swedish

4. A note on terminology

5. Passive and information structure

6. On the semantics of voice

7. Semantics and Pragmatics

References

Semantic and syntactic patterns in Swedish passives

1. S-passive and bli-passive

2. Conditions of use

2.1. Types of events vs. specific events

2.2. Aktionsart

3. Frequencies of the two passives

4. The nature of the subject

5. Alternation between s-passive and bli-passive

6. What happens to the demoted agent?

6.1. Av-phrases

6.2. Impersonal passives

6.3. Presentational constructions

7. Concluding remarks

Corpora

The Eastern Khanty locative-agent constructions

1. Introduction

2. The basics of the Eastern Khanty clause structure

3. Information structure

4. Non-canonical constructions

4.1. Structural properties of the non-canonical constructions

4.2. Eastern Khanty non-canonical constructions in the narrative

5. Conclusions on Eastern Khanty non-canonical constructions

Abbreviations

Agent back-grounding as a functional domain

1.1. Agent demotion and passive

1.2. Data

2. Be-passive

3. Anonymous-agent reflexive

3.1. Constraints on the agent

3.2. Constraints on the patient

4. Resultant state vs. agent anonymity

5. Networks of typologically related patterns

6. Conclusions

Sources of data

Invisible arguments

2. Impersonals in Estonian and Finnish

3. The `zero person' construction in Finnish and Estonian

4. Probing for the implicit argument

5. Anaphoric reference: Definite pronouns.

6. Anaphoric reference: Possessives, reflexives, reciprocals

6.1. Binding in the impersonal construction

6.2. Binding in the zero person construction

7. Semantic tests

7.1. Adverbials

7.2. Control structures

7.3. By-phrases

8. Bringing the data back home

9. Conclusions

Argument demotion as feature suppression

2. Dyadic unaccusatives and two ontological primitives

3. Passives and anticausatives in English and Albanian

3.1. By-phrases and from-phrases: How different are they?

3.2. The issue of purpose clauses and agent-oriented adverbs

4. A formal analysis of argument demotion in unaccusative contexts

4.1. The structure of causative predications

4.2. The structure of activity/process predications

4.3. Defining non-active voice

4.4. Deriving the unintended causation reading

4.5. Deriving the anticausative and the passive

5. Conclusion

A comparative view of the requirement for adverbial modification in middles

2. Variation in middles

2.1. Some of the syntactic facts

2.2. Middles as disposition ascriptions and the role of imperfective aspect

2.3. Back to the adverb

3. The semantic/pragmatic approach and its problems

4. A 'structural' account

5. Delimiting the set of appropriate modifiers

6. Conclusion and opened questions

From passive to active

1.1. Descriptive background

1.2. How to analyze the new construction: Two hypotheses

2. Syntactic change in the English auxiliary system

3. Grammatical properties of passive vs. active voice

3.1. Discourse properties of the passive voice

3.2. Syntactic properties of active vs. passive voice clauses

4. Cross-linguistic comparison: Passive morphology reanalyzed as active

5. The nationwide survey.

5.1. Reliability of judgments

5.2. Morphological case

5.3. Testing individual predictions

6.1. Why in Icelandic?

6.2. Reanalysis as simplification of the grammar

The relation between information structure, syntactic structure and passive

2. German and Norwegian

2.1. Structural contrasts

2.2. Passive constructions in German and Norwegian

2.3. The data

2.4. Information structure

3. What the translation pairs reveal

3.1. Change of voice

3.2. Change of topic

3.3. Additional support: Introducing an implicit agent

4. Concluding remarks

Syntax and semantics of the deontic WANT-passive in Italo-Romance

1. Introduction: The data

1.1. Some general properties of WANT-passives

1.2. A cross-linguistic view

1.3. Ledgeway's WANT-passive in Romance

2. General remarks on the passive

2.1. Some proposals on passive constructions

2.2. The classification of the Romance WANT-passive

3. Passive constructions and the external argument in the MP

4. The WANT-passive in the MP

4.1. General assumptions

4.2. The derivation of the deontic passive with WANT

5. WANT: Subcategorization frames and modal shift

5.1. Syntactic typology of WANT-constructions

5.2. WANT and modality's semantic map (cf. Van Auwera &amp

Plungian 1998)

6. Conclusion

Agentivity and the virtual reflexive construction

2. Comparing reflexive patient-subject constructions

3. Comparing virtual reflexives and middles

4. A review of Fellbaum's (1989) lexical semantic analysis

5. An alternative lexical semantic analysis

Acknowledgements

Appendix: Some additional attested examples of virtual reflexives

Arguments in middles

2. Genericity in middles.

3. On for-PPs in middles

4. On German middles

5. Towards an analysis of middle formation

5.1. Reflexives and event responsibility

5.2. Middles and vPs

Language index

Name index

Subject index

The series Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612155192

9781282155190

1282155199

9789027293077

9027293074

OCLC:

191943789