Cover not available

Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 43:4 (2019) ► pp.1015–1037

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

Agent demotion through inverted word order

Syntactic passives in Ulwa

ORCiD logo with link | Max-Planck-Institut für Menschheitsgeschichte
Published online: 23 January 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.19010.bar
Abstract
Passivization has been characterized as a strictly morphological phenomenon. Some definitions of passivization even require the passive construction to exhibit special verbal morphology. Increasingly, however, there have been descriptions of languages that have “morphology-free” passive constructions. This paper presents data from Ulwa, a Papuan language of the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, which forms its passive constructions through a syntactic operation. Specifically, passives are formed through the inversion of subject and predicate. Whereas the canonical transitive active sentence in Ulwa has the basic constituent order SOV, the corresponding passive sentence has the order VS, where the S of the passive corresponds to the O of the active. Agent arguments are optional; when they do appear in passive constructions, they are marked as obliques. The Ulwa data support claims that it is possible for passivization to be a syntactic phenomenon that operates on the level of the clause.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Defining the passive construction crosslinguistically
  • 3.Ulwa
  • 4.Ulwa passives
  • 5.Uses of the passive in Ulwa
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (42)
References
Arka, I. Wayan & Jeladu Kosmas. 2005. Passive without passive morphology? Evidence from Manggarai. In I. Wayan Arka & Malcolm Ross (eds.), The many faces of Austronesian voice systems: Some new empirical studies, 87–117. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barclay, Peter. 2008. A grammar of Western Dani (LINCOM Grammar Handbooks 01). München: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barlow, Russell. 2018. A grammar of Ulwa. Mānoa: University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa dissertation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. A syntactic motivation for valency reduction: Antipassive constructions in Ulwa. Oceanic Linguistics 58(1). 1–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bostoen, Koen & Léon Mundeke. 2011. Passiveness and inversion in Mbuun (Bantu B87, DRC). Studies in Language 35(1). 72–111. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cobbinah, Alexander. 2008. Das morphologisch unmarkierte Passiv: Typologische Untersuchungen am Beispiel des Bambara. Köln: Universität zu Köln MA thesis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cobbinah, Alexander & Friederike Lüpke. 2012. Not cut to fit: Zero coded passives in African languages. In Matthias Brenzinger & Anne-Maria Fehn (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th WOCAL World Congress of African Linguistics, Cologne, 17–21 August 2009, 153–165. Cologne: Köppe.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Creissels, Denis. 2007. A sketch of Bambara argument structure. Paper presented at the Workshop on Grammar and Processing of Verbal Arguments, Leipzig, April 20–21, 2007. Available online at [URL]
. 2014. P-lability and radical P-alignment. Linguistics 52(4). 911–944. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Demuth, Katherine. 1989. Maturation and the acquisition of the Sesotho passive. Language 65(1). 56–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dixon, Robert M. W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dixon, Robert M. W. & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. 2000. Introduction. In Robert M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), Changing valency: Case studies in transitivity, 1–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donohue, Mark. 2005. The Palu’e passive: From pragmatic construction to grammatical device. In I. Wayan Arka & Malcolm Ross (eds.), The many faces of Austronesian voice systems: Some new empirical studies, 59–85. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Durie, Mark. 1988. The so-called passive of Acehnese. Language 64(1). 104–113. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foley, William A. 1998. Symmetrical voice systems and precategoriality in Philippine languages. Paper presented at the Third Lexical Functional Grammar Conference, Brisbane, 30 June–2 July, 1998.
2008. The place of Philippine languages in a typology of voice systems. In Peter K. Austin & Simon Musgrave (eds.), Voice and grammatical relations in Austronesian languages, 22–44. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1979. On understanding grammar. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993. English grammar: A function-based introduction, volume II1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Syntax: An introduction, volume II1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1990. The grammaticization of passive morphology. Studies in Language 141. 25–70. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2002. Voice in Western Austronesian: An update. In Fay Wouk & Malcolm Ross (eds.), The history and typology of Western Austronesian voice systems, 7–15. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2005. The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar: Typological characteristics. In Willem Adelaar & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (eds.), The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar, 110–181. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1985. Passive in the world’s languages. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, volume 1, first edition, 243–281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. & Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 81. 63–99.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. & Matthew S. Dryer. 2007. Passive in the world’s languages. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, volume 11, second edition, 325–361. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 2013. Towards a null theory of the passive. Lingua 1251. 7–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. & Pamela Munro. 1975. Passives and their meaning. Language 51(4). 789–830. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lawler, John M. 1977. A agrees with B in Acehnese: A problem for relational grammar. In Peter Cole & Jerrold M. Sadock (eds.), Grammatical relations, syntax and semantics 7, 219–248. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1988. On the question of the Acehnese ‘passive’. Language 64(1). 114–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laycock, Donald C. 1973. Sepik languages: Checklist and preliminary classification (Pacific Linguistics: Series B, 25). Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lüpke, Friederike. 2007. Vanishing voice: The morphologically zero-coded passive of Jalonke. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 141. 173–191.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McElvenny, James. 2006. Notes on the Mudukumo language of the Yuat River, East Sepik Province, PNG. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noonan, Michael. 1994. A tale of two passives in Irish. In Barbara Fox & Paul J. Hopper (eds.), Voice: Form and function, 279–311. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pitteroff, Marcel. 2015. Unmarked passives: Evidence from German let-middles and let-passives. In Thuy Bui & Deniz Özyıldız (eds.), NELS 45: Proceedings of the Forty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, volume three1, 233–246. Amherst: Graduate Linguistics Student Association, University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Palmer, Bill. 2018. Language families of the New Guinea area. In Bill Palmer (ed.), The languages and linguistics of the New Guinea area: A comprehensive guide, 1–20. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riesberg, Sonja. 2014. Symmetrical voice and linking in Western Austronesian languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shi, Dingxu. 1997. Issues on Chinese passive. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 25(1). 41–70.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1985. Passives and related constructions: A prototype analysis. Language 61(4). 821–848. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The passive: A comparative linguistic analysis. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Passive constructions. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available online at [URL]
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2012. Passive agents: Prototypical vs. canonical passives. In Dunstan Brown, Marina Chumakina & Greville G. Corbett (eds.), Canonical morphology and syntax, 151–189. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Barlow, Russell
2020. A Sketch Grammar of Pondi, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue