Cover not available

In:The Lexicon–Syntax Interface: Perspectives from South Asian languages
Edited by Pritha Chandra and Richa Srishti
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 209] 2014
► pp. 149–170

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Is Kashmiri passive really a passive?

 | Central Institute of Indian Languages Mysore
 | Central Institute of Indian Languages Mysore
Published online: 25 March 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.209.07sri
The present paper explores passives in Kashmiri, a Northwestern Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan family. Though Kashmiri has some special features like V-2 phenomenon, pronominal clitics etc. it has an analytic passive construction like its Indo-Aryan counterparts. The internal argument surfaces as the subject of the passive, where the participial/infinitival verbal form -nI is added to the verb root followed by a periphrastic auxiliary yun ‘to come’ in perfective form. The agent of the action is in the form of athi or zaryi (by/through) and is preferably omitted. This optionality casts a doubt on its status – whether it is an adjunct or an argument. The promotion of the internal argument to the subject position is another key issue. The present paper investigates the above issues and claims that the Kashmiri passive construction is also a kind of ACTIVE-Passive and not really passive as in English. It is argued that in Kashmiri passives, the underlying subject remains an active subject and the underlying object does not become the surface subject. To prove this claim, some tests based on anaphora binding, pronominal co-reference, control, etc. are applied.
References (42)
References
Bach, Emmon. 1980. In defense of passive. Linguistics and Philosophy 3: 297–341. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Mark, Kyle Johnson & Ian Roberts. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 219–252.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhatt, Rajesh & Pancheva, Roumanya. 2006. Implicit arguments. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax , vol. II, 554–584. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. 1982. The passive in lexical theory. In J. Bresnan (Ed.), The mental representation of grammatical relations (pp. 3–86). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chandra, Pritha & Sahoo, Anindita. 2013. Passives in south asian languages. Acta Linguistica Asiatica 3: 9–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures . The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax . The MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, Willam. 1994. Voice: Beyond control and affectedness. In P. J. Hopper & B. A. Fox (Eds.), Voice: Form and function (pp. 89–117). Amsterdam: John Benjamin Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davison, Alice. 1982. On the form and meaning of Hindi passive sentences. Lingua 58(1–2): 149–179. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Freidin, Robert. 1975. The analysis of passives, Language 51: 384–405. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax. A Functional Typological Introduction-II . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(ed.). 1994. Voice and Inversion . Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grimshaw, Jane, 1990. Argument Structure . Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1990. The grammaticalization of passive morphology. Studies in Language 14: 25–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hasegawa, Kinsuke. 1968. The passive construction in English. Language 44: 230–243. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hook, Peter Edwin. 1979. Hindi Structures: Intermediate Level. Michigan Papers on South and South-East Asia 16, Center for South and South-East Asian Studies , University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Jackendoff, Ray, S. 1969. An Interpretive Theory of Negation. Foundation of Language 5(2): 218–241.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kachru, Yamuna. 1980. Aspects of Hindi-Grammar . New Delhi: Manohar Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward. 1976. Towards a universal definition of ‘subject.’ In Subject and Topic , Charles N. Li (ed.), 303–34. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. & Dryer, Matthew S. 2007. Passive in the world’s languages. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description . Vol. I: Clause Structure, Timothy Shopen (ed.), 325–361. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 2012. Towards a null theory of passives. Lingua. Nov . 2012.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klaiman, Miriam. H. 1991. Grammatical Voice . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1974. Interview in H. Parret (Ed.), Discussing language , pp. 178–179. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahajan, Anoop. 1994. Active passives. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics , R. Aronovich, W. Byrne, S. Preuss & M. Senturia (eds). Stanford University: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mohanan, Tara. 1994. Argument Structure in Hindi . Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pandharipande, Rajeshwari. 1981. Transitivity in Hindi. 11(2): 161–179. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David M. & Postal, Paul M. 1984. The I-advancement exclusiveness law. In Studies in Relational Grammar 2 , David M. Perlmutter & Carol Rosen (eds), 81–125. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb Meaning and the Lexicon: A First Phase Syntax . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Licensing of instrumental case in Hindi/Urdu in Causatives. Working Papers on Language & Linguistics 38 . Tromsø University: Septentrio Acdemic Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Richa. 2011. Hindi Verb Classes and Their Argument Structure Alternations . UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robson, Roy Anthony. 1972. On the generation of passive constructions in English. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Texas, Austin, USA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roeper, Thomas. 1987. Implicit Arguments and the Head-Complement Relation. Linguistic Inquiry 18(2): 267–310.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosen, Carol. & Wali, Kashi.1989. Twin passives, inversion, and multistratalism in Marathi. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7(1): 1–50.
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1985. Passives and related constructions: A prototype analysis. Language 61: 821–848. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. Passive: A Comparative Linguistic Analysis . Croom Helm: New Hampshire.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1988. The passive in Slavic languages. In M. Shibatani (Ed.), Passive and voice (pp. 243–289). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Chand. 1994. Passives and inverse constructions. In Voice and Inversion , T. Givón (ed.). 47–63. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ura, Hiroyuki. 2000. Checking Theory and Grammatical Functions in Universal Grammar . New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wali, Kashi. & Koul, Omkar Nath. 1994. Kashmiri clitics: The role of the case and CASE. Linguistics 32: 969–994. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wali, Kashi & Koul, Omkar Nath. 1997. Kashmiri: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar . London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wunderlich, Dieter. 2012. Operations on argument structure. In Handbook of Semantics , Claudia Maienborn et al.. (ed.), Vol. 3. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ziff, Paul. 1966. The Nonsynonymy of Active and Passive Sentences. The Philosophical Review 75: 226–232. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue