Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua
Middle voice
Ingrid Kaufmann
FB Sprachwissenschaft, D174, Universität Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany
Received 6 July 2006; received in revised form 2 October 2006; accepted 10 October 2006
Available online 7 May 2007
Abstract
The middle differs from other argument changing operations in that it leads to different readings, in
particular anticausative, reflexive, causative reflexive, and modal (facilitative). The readings depend on the
semantic class of the base and the sortal properties of the highest argument. Middle verb forms that
correspond to an active verb form generally display a reduced argument structure. Some readings also
involve changes in the event structure. On the basis of data from Fula, I argue that the conceptual motivation
of middle marking is the existence of actions that can be semantically modelled as involving an agent and a
patient argument although in most cases, only one participant is involved in the event. Middle verb forms
share the semantic representation of the corresponding active verb form. In contrast to active verb forms,
middle verb forms do not project the agent argument into the argument structure. According to this analysis,
the different middle readings are due to different interpretation strategies that can apply if the default
initiator/controller of an action verb is not projected into the argument position which represents the actual
initiator/controller of the event. Finally, the readings of the middle in Fula are compared with readings that
can be observed in other languages and a set of parameters that accounts for the distribution is proposed.
# 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Middle; Reflexive; Voice; Fula; Argument structure
1. Introduction
Compared to argument reducing diatheses like the passive or the anticausative, the middle has
some puzzling properties that can be observed crosslinguistically. First, there are middle marked
verbs for which no corresponding active verb form exists, i.e., the so called deponent verbs or
media tantum. Since there is no corresponding active form, the media tantum cannot be analyzed
as derived forms but have to be regarded as base forms, i.e. as middle stems. Interestingly, the
media tantum typically belong to certain semantic classes (Kemmer, 1993; Klaiman, 1991),
E-mail address: ingrid.kaufmann@uni-konstanz.de.
0024-3841/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2006.10.001
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I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
which means that they are not accidental language specific lexicalizations, as the notion deponent
verbs might suggest.1 Although there is a certain range of language specific variation, the relevant
classes typically comprise verbs of emotion, verbs of cognition and certain types of verbs of
motion and localization (see section 2). Secondly, for those middle forms that are related to
corresponding active forms, the exact contribution of the middle is difficult to determine since a
number of readings can arise, depending on the semantic class of the verb (and some other
grammatical factors which will be discussed in section 4). In other words, the middle itself is
polysemous. For illustration, three examples of different middle readings in Fula are given in (1),
together with the contrasting active and passive forms.2,3
(1)
a.
b.
c.
active
o
yiiwii=Egel
3SG bathed.ACT=CL3
‘S/he bathed it (the child).’
o
7 esdii
sheede
3SG increased.ACT price
‘S/he increased the price.’
mi
la7 ii=mo
I
shaved.ACT=3SG
‘I shaved him.’
middle
passive
o yiiwake
Egel yiiwaama
3SG bathed.MID
CL3 bathed.PASS
‘S/he bathed.’
‘It (the child) was bathed.’
sheede 7esdake
sheede 7esdaama
price increased.MID price increased.PASS
‘The price increased.’ ‘The p. has been increased.’
mi la7 ake
mi la7 aama
I shaved.MID
I shaved.PASS
‘I got myself shaved.’ ‘I have been shaved.’
The examples show that the middle reading can be reflexive (1a), or anticausative (1b), or even
involve causativity (1c). Examples for further readings are given in section 2. There is some
variation between the readings that the middle can display in different languages. This variation
will be considered in section 5 below.
In this paper, I argue that the middle is not an operation on the argument structure of the active
form, but basically a morphological device that serves to mark certain non-canonical semantic
properties of the arguments of verbal stems. Although the middle is a stem marking strategy, it
can be productive in that a fully fledged middle voice system allows the formation of a
corresponding middle stem for every transitive agentive verb. The crosslinguistic variation
results from the lexical character of middle marking, which gives rise to language specific
subregularities and idiosyncrasies.
Moreover, I claim that the existence of middle marking is conceptually motivated. The
underlying source of the middle is a general conflict in the mapping of certain situation concepts
to syntax. Middle encoding languages resolve this conflict by providing two alternative strategies
of constructing the argument structure of semantically two-place, agentive verbs. One type of
argument structure is instantiated by active stems and the other by middle stems. In a fully
fledged middle system, this strategy is expanded so that middle stems serve to encode different
types of ‘‘detransitivized’’ alternates to agentive transitive verbs. The semantics of the base verb
together with some general conditions determine whether a middle form is to be interpreted as
agentive or nonagentive, reflexive or anticausative. The readings of the middle that are available
1
Traditionally, the notion ‘deponent verbs’ refers to verbs that have ‘deposed’ their middle (or passive) meaning, i.e.
verbs that are morphologically middle (passive) but semantically active.
2
All Fula examples are taken from Arnott (1956, 1970), see section 2 for details.
3
Abbreviations: ACT: active, ACC: accusative, CL: noun class, DAT: dative, IMPERF: imperfective, MID: middle, NEG:
negation, OBJ: object, PASS: passive, PERF: perfective, PST: past, PL: plural, Q: question, REFL: reflexive, RPERF: relative
perfective, SG: singular, STAT: stative.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
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Table 1
Underlying conjugational suffixes in Maasina according to Breedveld (1995)
Imperative singular/plural
Exhortative
Verb focus (perfective)
Subjunctive
Imperfective
Relative imperfective
Indefinite imperfective
Negative imperfective
Perfective
Relative perfective
Negative perfective
Negative (quality)
Active
Middle
Passive
-u/-ee
-u
-u
-a-an
-ata–
-uma
-ataa
-ii
-i–
-aali, -aay
-aa
-a/-ee
-o
-i
-oo–
-oto
-otoo–
-ooma
-ataako
-ike, -iima
-ii–
-aaki
-a
-ee–
-ete
-etee–
(-)
-ataake
-aama
-aa–
-aaka
in a language depend on language specific properties, which are only partly related to the
function of the middle itself.
The analysis presented here owes many insights to Geniusiene (1987), Klaiman (1991) and
Kemmer (1993). Crucial for the analysis is the notion of ‘situation control’, which was originally
introduced by Klaiman (1991). The analysis itself is similar in spirit to the syntactic analysis of
reflexive constructions of Steinbach (2002).4
The paper is structured as follows. The next section gives an overview of the middle in Fula.
The conceptual background of the middle voice is discussed in section 3. In section 4, I develop
an analysis with respect to the data introduced in section 2. Section 5 is concerned with the
crosslinguistic variation of the middle, section 6 concludes the paper.
2. The middle in Fula: data
Fula (Fulfulde) is a Atlantic Niger-Congo language. According to Arnott (1970), six major
dialects can be distinguished. Not all of these dialects still have a productive middle system.5 The
data analysed in the following are from Arnott’s description of the Gombe dialect spoken in
Northern Nigeria (see Arnott, 1956, 1970).
Fula is an SVO language with rich verbal morphology. Voice is encoded by fused inflectional
elements, together with aspect, polarity, mood and discourse perspective (Breedveld, 1995).
Three voices are distinguished: active, middle and passive. The underlying forms of the
conjugational suffixes as given in Breedveld (1995:221) are listed in Table 1.6 Although some of
the suffixes contain idiosyncratic material, Breedveld shows that most of them are composed of
4
In contrast to Steinbach, I argue for a lexical analysis. This has the advantage that the so called indirect reflexive
reading and the media tantum can be accounted for.
5
McIntosh (1984:4) mentions that Adamawa, a dialect which is used as a lingua franca in North Eastern Nigeria and
Northern Cameroon has lost the middle voice as well as the system of consonant alternation and the occurrence of VS order.
6
Breedveld (1995) closely examines the phonological and morphological properties of the Maasina dialect spoken in
Mali. With respect to the conjugational suffixes, there are some marginal differences between this dialect and the Gombe
dialect described by Arnott, namely the Perfective Middle is –ake in Gombe (-ike in Maasina), Imperfective Active is
-ay/-et in Gombe (-an in Maasina), Negative Perfective Active is -aayi in Gombe (-aali/-aay in Maasina). For
convenience, I depart from Breedveld’s notation by using e instead of e and o instead of &.
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Table 2
Voice markers (Breedveld, 1995:226)
Active
Middle
Passive
Imperfective
Perfective
–
o
e
u
i
a
smaller morphemes.7 Voice is encoded by vowel quality, but different vowels are used in
Perfective and Imperfective verb forms (Table 2). According to Breedveld, -i marks perfective
aspect, at- incompletive aspect, -aa negative polarity and vowel length distinguishes different
focalizing conjugations (where Verb Focus = focus is on the verb, Perfective/Imperfective = focus is on the whole sentence, Relative Perfective/Imperfective = focus is on one
constituent). The combination of Imperfective -at and Middle -o adds up to the suffix -oto. The
form -otoo (Relative Imperfective Middle) results from an additional vowel plus word final
glottalization. For further details, see Breedveld (1995). Note, however, that not all of the
conjugational suffixes are transparent. Table 1 shows that some of the suffixes contain
idiosyncratic material, such as the ke or ma in the Perfective Middle. The Gombe Perfective
Middle form -ake is even less transparent than the Maasina form in that the relevant voice
vowel i is replaced by a.
In (2)–(11), the different possible readings of middle forms are illustrated. All of the middle
forms in (2)–(11) contrast with a (transitive or ditransitive) active form and a passive form.
Following Arnott, I call these middle forms the ‘differential middle forms’ in order to distinguish
them from the media tantum. As in the passive, the argument structure of the middle form is
reduced compared to the active form. But whereas in the passive it is always the agent argument
which is implicit, the argument which is subject to the reduction in the middle seems to vary from
reading to reading.
In the reflexive readings of the middle, either the theme/patient or the beneficiary of the
corresponding active form is left unrealized and interpreted as being coreferent with the agent in
the middle (called ‘direct reflexive reading’ and ‘indirect reflexive reading’, respectively).8 It is
crucial to note, however, that the middle is not a general option to express reflexivity in Fula.9
Most verbs are reflexivized either by using the detransitivising reflexive verbal suffix -it or the
reflexive noun hoore ‘head’. The existence of independent reflexivization strategies shows that
reflexivization is not the primary function of the middle, as Klaiman (1991) has pointed out.
According to Arnott, the direct reflexive reading is restricted to verbs that encode ‘‘actions that
are normally performed on the body or a part’’ (Arnott, 1970:255). These are mainly verbs of
7
I don’t agree with every detail of Breedveld’s analysis, which runs into problems at some points. Since my aim here is
to give an impression of the morphological encoding of voice, I will not elaborate on this point.
8
Note that thematic role labels like ‘agent’, ‘patient’, beneficiary are only used descriptively in this paper and have no
theoretical status. An anonymous reviewer wondered why I do not use the u-system proposed by Reinhart and Siloni
(2005) for my description, since the distinction between situation control and intentionality introduced in section 4
converges with their assumptions. The reason is that this would add a further technical aspect without providing the
distinctions that I want to make. For a discussion of Reinhart’s u-system I refer to Kaufmann (2003).
9
The same holds for other middle marking languages. In European languages that encode the middle functions by
reflexive constructions, the distinction between middles and true reflexives is often blurred. There are a number of tests,
however, that can be applied to differentiate between middle reflexives and ‘true’ reflexives (see e.g., Sells et al., 1987;
Steinbach, 2002).
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
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grooming and body care. An adequate analysis of the middle thus has to provide some means to
account for this restriction.
(2)
direct reflexive reading of the middle
a.
o loot-ii
7iyiko
‘S/he washed the child.’
3SG wash-PERF.ACT child
b.
o
loot-ake
‘S/he washed.’
3SG wash-PERF.MID
c.
o loot-aama
‘S/he was washed.’
3SG wash-PERF.PASS
active
middle
passive
In the indirect reflexive reading, the beneficient is coreferent with the agent. This reading is not
productive in Fula, although it was a very productive reading of the middle in Ancient Greek
(see section 5). Arnott (1970) gives only three examples. However, the example in (3), taken from
Arnott (1970:255), seems to be more adequately classified as a causative indirect reflexive
(‘I made him/her lend me the book.’). The same holds for another of Arnott’s examples (active:
fe’y’y-a ‘advance’ – middle: fe’y’y-o ‘borrow’).10 In the last example (active: res-a ‘set down,
deposit on the ground’, middle: res-o ‘set aside, put on deposit (for one’s own future use)’), active
and middle forms have the same number of arguments. I therefore assume that the relation
between active and middle is not transparent here.
(3)
indirect reflexive reading of the middle11
a.
mi wu’y-ii=mo
deptere ‘I lent him/her a book.’
I lend-PERF.ACT-3SG book
b.
mi wu’y-ake
deptere
‘I borrowed a book.’
I lend-PERF.MID book
active
middle
In the causative-reflexive reading the subject of the active form (the agent) is implicit, while the
patient/theme of the active form is realized as the subject. The causative reflexive reading differs
from the passive in that the patient/theme is in control of the situation.12 In contrast to the direct
reflexive reading, the causative reflexive reading is restricted to verbs that encode actions ‘‘that a
Fulani normally does not perform on himself, such as shaving, dressing the hair’’ (Arnott,
1970:256), but lets someone else perform on him. These verbs also belong to the verbs of body
care. Whether the middle form displays the direct or the causative reflexive reading seems to be a
lexical property of the verb in Fula.13 As other verbs that do not allow the direct reflexive reading
10
Following Arnott, I use the subjunctive as the citation form (-a: active, -o: middle, -e: passive).
Arnott (1970:255) classifies these verbs as ‘3-voice radicals’, i.e. verbs that occur in all three voices, but does not give
a passive form for these examples.
12
An anonymous reviewer wondered whether the causative reflexive reading may also have a non-intentional
interpretation similar to overt causative reflexive constructions in French or German (see fn. 35). Although I cannot
exclude the possibility, neither Arnott nor any of the other authors that I consulted mentioned such a reading.
13
This is a language specific property of Fula. In Greek and Spanish, verbs of grooming and body care allow both the
direct and the causative reflexive reading. Which reading arises, depends on the context.
(i) Pedro se afeita en la barberı́a.
Spanish
‘Pedro is getting shaved at the barbers.’
(ii) Pedro se afeita en su cuarto de baño.
‘Pedro is shaving in his bathroom.’
11
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of the middle, verbs that display the causative reflexive reading can only be interpreted
reflexively if the reflexive suffix –it is added to the stem (Arnott, 1970:256).
(4)
causative reflexive reading of the middle
a.
o
femmb-ii-mo
‘S/he shaved him.’
3SG shave-PERF.ACT=3SG
b.
o
femmb-ake
‘He got himself shaved.’
3SG shave-PERF.MID
c.
o
femmb-aama
‘He was shaved.’
3SG shave-PERF.PASS
active
middle
passive
In the anticausative reading of the middle, the causer of the active form is unrealized. Here, the
causer is not part of the interpretation of the middle form. The anticausative reading is restricted
to causative verbs that encode changes which can also occur without the influence of an external
causer. Note that the only argument of the middle form can be either a patient (5) or an agent (6).
(5)–(6)
(5)
a.
b.
c.
(6)
a.
b.
c.
anticausative reading of the middle
o ma77-ii
yolnde
‘S/he closed the door.’
3SG close-PERF.ACT door
yolnde ma77-ake
‘The door closed.’
door close-PERF.MID
yolnde ma77-aama
‘The door was closed.’
door close-PERF.PASS
o
3SG
7e
3PL
7e
3PL
moo7t-ii=7 e
assemble-PERF.ACT=CL2
moo7 t-ake
assemble-PERF.MID
moo7 t-aama
assemble-PERF.PASS
active
middle
passive
‘He assembled them.’
active
‘They assembled.’
middle
‘They were assembled.’
passive
Note that the agentive anticausative reading of the middle illustrated in (6) is semantically
identical to the direct reflexive reading. The reason why the middle reading of verbs like ‘lay
down’, ‘turn’ and ‘move’ is nevertheless classified as anticausative rather than direct reflexive is
that these verbs also allow a nonanimate subject (and a nonagentive reading) in the middle,
whereas verbs with the direct reflexive reading do not.
In the modal reading, the middle has a noneventive, dispositional interpretation (‘The patient
is manipulable in the way specified by the verb.’). This reading corresponds to the so called
middle construction (This book reads easily.). It occurs in the imperfective aspect, which in Fula
generally may obtain a generic reading. The modal reading of the middle seems to be relatively
unrestricted, as long as it makes any sense. In the Positive Imperfective, the modal reading
expresses possibility (7b), in the Negative Imperfective, it expresses impossibility (7b’).
(7)
modal reading of the middle
a.
o
yar-ii=,am
3SG drink-PERF.ACT=CL22
b.
,am yar-ot-o
na
CL22 drink-IMPERF.MID Q
‘S/he drank it.’
‘Is it drinkable?’
active
middle
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
b’.
c.
,am
CL22
,am
CL22
yar-at-aak-o
drink-IMPERF-NEG-MID
yar-at-aak-e
drink-IMPERF-NEG-PASS
‘It can’t be drunk.’
‘It won’t be drunk.’
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middle
(negative)
passive
(negative)
Another reading of the middle that is aspectually restricted is the resultative reading, which
occurs only in the so called stative aspect.14 The stative is a periphrastic construction formed by
the auxiliary ,on and the Relative Perfective form of the main verb. It picks out the result state of
change of state verbs and is therefore restricted to verbs that imply a result state. Example (8)
illustrates the formation and interpretation of the stative in the three voices. In the active, the
stative is most frequently found with intransitive change of state verbs (8a). Example (8b) shows
that even in the resultative reading, the active form of a transitive verb preserves the agentive
reading, while the middle and the passive form are non-agentive (8c,d). According to Arnott, the
Stative Passive is less frequent than the Stative Active and Middle. It differs from the Stative
Middle in that an agent is always implied although the agent argument cannot be realized overtly.
(8)
a.
b.
c.
d.
o ,on tekk-i
‘He’s fat (having put on weight).’ active
3SG STAT gain weight-RPERF.ACT
mi ,on naEEg-I=mo
‘I’ve got him/her under arrest,
active
I STAT arrest-RPERF.ACT=3.SG
in my clutches.’
,um ,on ha77-ii
‘It’s tied up.’
middle
CL23 STAT tie-RPERF.MID
,um ,on ha77-aa
‘It’s tied up (by somebody).’
passive
CL23 STAT tie-RPERF.PASS
Among the verbs that allow the resultative reading of the middle are some that also allow the
direct reflexive or the anticausative reading. In the examples in (9)–(11), the Perfective Active
form of each verb is presented in (a) and the Stative Middle form in (b).15
(9)–(11)
(9)
a.
b.
(10)
a.
b.
resultative reading of the middle
o
nam-ii
gawri
‘S/he ground the grain.’
3SG grind-PERF.ACT grain
gawri ndin ,on nam-ii
‘The grain is ground.’
grain CL10 STAT grind-RPERF.MID
o ma77-ii
yolnde
3SG close-PERF.ACT door
yolnde ,on ma77-ii
door STAT close-RPERF.MID
active
middle
‘S/he closed the door.’
active
‘The door is closed.’
middle
14
Nedjalkov and Jaxontov (1988:6) characterize the difference between statives and resultatives as follows: ‘‘The
stative expresses a state of a thing without any implication of its origin, while the resultative expresses both a state and the
preceding action it has resulted from.’’ With respect to this definition, the relevant structure is to be classified as a stative,
since the preceding event is not part of the interpretation. I use the term ‘resultative reading of the middle’ here since the
reading is restricted to verbs that encode a change of state. Semantically, the resultative reading of the middle corresponds
to the stative interpretation of the participle in sentences like The door is closed.
15
Note that in the examples (9)–(11) both the (General) Perfective Active in (a) and the Relative Perfective Middle,
which –together with ,on– forms the stative in (b), are marked by the suffix –ii. The examples in (8) illustrate, however,
that the stative forms cannot be analyzed as actives, since the suffix of the Relative Perfective Active is -i.
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Table 3
The voice potential of 1550 verbal roots in Gombe (Arnott, 1970:188)
Active
Middle
Passive
Active/middle
Middle/passive
Active/passive
Active/passive/(middle aspectually restricted)
Active/middle/passive
(11)
a.
b.
o loot-ii
7iyiko
3SG wash-PERF.ACT child
o ,on loot-ii
3SG STAT wash-RPERF.MID
31%
13.5%
0.5%
less than 1%
10%
1%
24%
20%
1-voice verbs: 45%
2-voice verbs: 11%
3-voice verbs: 44%
‘S/he washed the child.’
active
‘S/he is washed/clean.’
middle
As the examples (2)–(11) show, all of the verbs that can occur in the active, middle and passive
are transitive (or ditransitive) agentive verbs. Other verbs are more restricted with respect to their
voice potential. Table 3 gives an overview on the voice potential of 1550 verbal roots in Gombe
(see Arnott, 1970:188).
As Table 3 shows, the activa tantum are the largest group among the 1-voice verbs. In Fula,
activa tantum are intransitive verbs which, according to Arnott (1956), may encode activities as
well as involuntary, reflex acts, properties, or changes of properties. Properties and changes of
properties are encoded by different aspectual forms of the same stem (the Stative and any
nonstative aspect respectively; Arnott, 1970:412). Examples for different types of activa tantum
are given in (12) (see Arnott, 1956:141ff). Following Arnott, I use the Subjunctive as the citation
form (Subjunctive Active -a, Subjunctive Middle -o, Subjunctive Passive -e).
(12)
activa tantum
a.
properties/changes of properties: mawn-a ‘be/become big’, tedd-a ‘be/become
heavy’, hall-a ‘be/become wicked’, ’yo’y-a
‘be/become cunning’
b.
agentive verbs:
hur-a ‘snort’, wodd-a ‘roar, bellow’, war-a
‘come’, yah-a ‘walk’
c.
involuntary, reflex processes:
yi’-a ‘see’, nan-a ‘hear’, ma’y’y-a ‘blink’,
, isl-a ‘sneeze’, yejjit-a ‘forget’, annd-a
‘know’, siftor-a ‘remember’
As mentioned in section 1, every language with a middle voice has a class of media tantum.
Among the media tantum in Fula are (a) verbs that are borrowed from Hausa and (b) verbs that
belong to those semantic classes which cross-linguistically tend to display middle morphology.
Examples for media tantum are given in (13) (see Arnott, 1970:413ff).
(13)
16
media tantum
a.
borrowings from Hausa16:
muug-o ‘be evil’, foor-o ‘punish’, gay-o ‘invite’,
tuur-o ‘push’
Most of the Hausa loanwords cited by Arnott (1970) are transitive verbs which can be passivized.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
b.
1685
semantic verb classes
emotion:
cognition:
emotive speech acts:
physical assault or aim:
sey-o ‘rejoice’, sun-o ‘be sad’, duEg-o ‘be content’
hiim-o ‘think’, miil-o ‘ponder’, his-o ‘calculate’
barr-o ‘threaten’, toony-o ‘provoke’, tor-o ‘beg’
udd-o ‘attack’, faag-o ‘pursue’, udd-o ‘fall on,
attack’, , iny-o ‘dog someone’s steps’
self controlled motion:
yin-o ‘swim’, umm-o ‘get up, start out’, so7 t-o
‘slip away, escape’
self controlled localization: dar-o ‘stand, stop’, nis7 -o ‘sit’, dicc-o ‘kneel’,
tur-o ‘stoop’
Klaiman (1991) characterizes the media tantum that belong to the semantic verb classes
illustrated in (13b) as verbs that express actions ‘‘presupposing the logical subject’s animacy
and control, and relating either to physical state or attitude, or to mental disposition’’
(Klaiman, 1991:59). Arnott (1956:143) notes, however, that 120 of the 367 middle and
middle/passive verbs in his corpus do not fit into these classes. I therefore, assume that the
voice of media tantum is lexically fixed and may, but need not be semantically motivated. A
comparison of the verbs in (12) and (13) shows that some activa tantum belong to the semantic
‘middle classes’ as well. Thus, semantic ‘middle’ properties may, but need be morphologically
reflected.
Besides the activa and media tantum, Arnott (1956, 1970) also mentions a few verbs that
occur only in the passive (0.5% in his sample). According to Klaiman (1991:279f) Arnott
(p.c.) later came across corresponding active or middle forms for all of these verbs except
one. This means in effect that there is no class of passiva tantum. This is important insofar as
it illustrates a principled difference between middle and passive voice. Passives are always
derived from a corresponding active or middle form and thus can be classified as a ‘derived
voice’ (Klaiman, 1991), whereas middles have been argued to be non-derived base forms
(‘basic voice’, Klaiman, 1991). Following Klaiman, I also assume that middle stems
in general are not derived from active stems, but have independent lexical entries. Passive
stems, in contrast, are derived by an operation on the argument structure of agentive active or
middle stems. In what follows, I will use the notions activa tantum and media tantum for
those verbs which do not correspond to a middle or active form, respectively, regardless of
whether a passive form can be derived or not. The agentive transitive media tantum in (13)
also can be passivized, i.e. they belong to the 10% of verbs in Table 3 that inflect for middle
and passive.
Interestingly, very few verbs in Fula allow active and passive voice only (1%). Since only
transitive verbs can be passivized in Fula, this means that there is a middle reading available for
nearly all transitive verbs.
The remaining class of two-voice verbs (active/middle) contains verb pairs that are
semantically related but not in a transparent way (e.g., yeeut-a ‘converse’ – yeeut-o ‘tell a story’,
hiirt-a ‘spend the evening’ – hiirt-o ‘eat the evening meal’, waal-a ‘spend the night’ – waal-o ‘lie
down’). For some of these verbs, the relation seems to be systematic, however, in that the active
form encodes a non-agentive state whereas the middle form encodes a corresponding activity
(wo,, -a ‘be distant’ – wo,,-o ‘go far away’, wel-a ‘be pleasant, sweet’ – wel-o ‘please’, mett-a
‘be unpleasant’ – mett-o displease’, ’en,-a ‘be kind’ – ’en,-o ‘be kind to’). These pairs
thus resemble the so called ‘dynamic reading’ of the middle found in Ancient Greek, see
Kaufmann (2004) for details.
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3. The conceptual basis of middle marking
The crucial factor for the existence of middle marking is that different levels of representation
are relevant for the linguistic encoding of situations. Syntactically, the core participants of a
situation are realized by NPs which function as grammatical subjects and objects. The syntactic
valence of the verb usually reflects its semantic valence, which itself is determined by the number
of participants involved in the situation. Situations that typically involve one participant are
semantically represented by one place predicates (leaving the event argument aside) whereas
situations that typically involve two participants are semantically represented by two place
predicates. Syntactically, they are realized as intransitive and transitive verbs, respectively. Due
to universal semantic restrictions on verbs, the argument hierarchy reflects the causal structure
(or event structure; see e.g. Croft, 1998; Kaufmann, 1995). Thus, the subject of a prototypical
transitive agentive base verb is interpreted as being the agent who acts on the patient. The object,
on the other hand, is interpreted as the patient who is affected by the action and has no control
over what happens to him.
If we look at the core readings of the middle, we find that active-middle pairs are used to
mark the transitive and intransitive variants of verbs that characterize situations for which it is
difficult to decide whether a one-place predicate or a two-place relation is more basic for the
semantic representation. Shaving, for example, is an action that in most cases involves
only one participant and, thus, should be semantically represented by a one-place predicate.
If a one-place predicate were chosen, shave would be lexicalized as an intransitive
verb. In that case, the corresponding two-participant shaving situation would have to be
encoded by a different verb, which could be derived from the intransitive stem or lexicalized
independently.
In many languages, shave is classified as a transitive verb although the one-participant reading
is actually more frequent. The reason is that argument realisation is also a means of reflecting the
underlying event structure. As in other situations characterized by typical transitive verbs,
shaving includes both an action performed by an agent and a change of a property of a patient. By
lexicalizing shave as a transitive verb, the event structure and the thematic properties of the
argument(s) are made transparent, although in most of the cases the individual undergoing the
change is the agent himself.
If shave is lexicalized as a transitive verb, the semantically one-place variant has to be
derived by reflexivization. The interpretation of reflexivizations of prototypical transitive
verbs is that the patient on which an agent chooses to act is not somebody else but the agent
himself. This interpretation, however, differs slightly from the conceptualization of the
intransitive reading of verbs of body care like shave. Arnott’s characterization of the class of
verbs that allow the direct or causative reflexive reading of the middle strongly suggests that
in the case of prototypically transitive verbs, it is the agent who is interested in performing an
action (and may decide to perform it on him/herself), whereas in the latter, it is the patient
who is interested in being shaved or washed (and decides whether to perform the action him/
herself or not).17 Remember that according to Arnott, verbs that allow the causative reflexive
reading of the middle refer to actions ‘‘that a Fulani normally does not perform on himself’’.
Correspondingly, verbs that allow the direct reflexive reading can be characterized as verbs
that refer to actions that a Fulani normally does perform on him/herself. It should be clear that
17
See also Sells et al. (1987) and Reinhart and Reuland (1993) for a discussion of the semantic differences between
syntactic and lexical reflexives.
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this does not mean that the only thing a Fulani normally washes is him/herself, but rather that
if the question of being washed is at stake, a Fulani would rather perform the washing him/
herself.
To summarize, for the one-participant reading, which is the default reading of verbs like
shave, a conflict arises as to which part of the conceptual information should be reflected by the
argument structure: the default number of participants or the event structure together with the
thematic properties. In the next section, I will argue that languages with a middle voice resolve
this conflict by relating a two place semantic relation to two different argument structures. In the
active, both arguments are projected to argument structure, in the middle, only one argument is
projected.
A similar conflict arises in the case of inchoative/causative pairs. The closing of a door can
happen spontaneously or be caused by somebody. For reasons of economy it makes sense to
provide only one morphological form for both concepts. For reasons of explicitness, there
should be some morphological means to distinguish the one- and two-participant reading.
Languages differ in how they lexicalize these kinds of verbs. For causative/inchoative pairs,
Haspelmath (1993) mentions five different strategies: the anticausative alternation (base verb
transitive, intransitive verb derived), the causative alternation (base verb intransitive, transitive
verb derived), the equipollent alternation (transitive and intransitive verb derived from a
common stem), the labile alternation (one form used in both transitive and intransitive
construction), and the suppletive alternation (different stems for transitive und intransitive
verbs).
With respect to economy and explicitness, the different strategies have different advantages
and disadvantages. Sharing the same stem, for example, is more economical from a
morphological perspective but may lead to ambiguity. Ambiguity can be avoided if one of the
alternants is derived from the other by morphological means. Which alternant is classified as the
base, is often decided by iconicity (Haspelmath, 1993).
Middle marking languages realize the transitive variant of causative/inchoative pairs in the
active voice and the intransitive variant in the middle. Under the assumption that the active is
more basic than the middle, these languages could be characterized as employing the
anticausative strategy. They differ from other languages that employ this strategy, however, in
that they use the same marking strategy for different types of ‘detransitivisation’, which require
different semantic operations. While the anticausative reading is generally assumed to result
from the deletion of a semantic argument (see e.g. Reinhart and Siloni, 2004, 2005), there is no
indication for (semantic) argument deletion in the causative and the direct reflexive reading.
In the following, I argue that active/middle systems provide a sixth type of causative/
inchoative (or rather ‘transitive/intransitive’) alternation: active and middle forms are
independent stems which are derived from the same root and share the same semantic
representation. By deriving the two forms from one root, the conceptual similarity of the one- and
two-participant situations is accounted for. The two stems differ, however, in whether the agent
argument is projected to the argument structure or not. The argument structure thus reflects the
difference between the situations with respect to the number of participants.
A consequence of this strategy of representing transitive/intransitive alternations is that the
agent argument is left as an unbound variable in the semantic representation of middle stems. The
polysemy of the middle arises because the interpretation of the implicit agent is not specified.
Adopting the two level approach to meaning developed by Bierwisch (see e.g., Bierwisch, 1983;
Bierwisch, 1997; Maienborn, 2001), I assume that information that is unspecified in the semantic
form (SF) of a lexical entry has to be provided by contextual or conceptual information on the
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level of conceptual structure (CS). Depending on the semantic properties of the verb, different
strategies are applied at CS in order to arrive at a well-formed interpretation of the implicit agent
argument of middle stems. The different readings of the middle reflect these strategies. How
different conceptual specifications lead to the various readings of the middle is discussed in
section 4.
While many languages provide morphological means to encode some of the differential
readings of the middle, the characteristic properties of middle voice languages is that they use the
same morphological device for marking media tantum. In order to account for the media tantum
as well as for the differential readings of the middle, two levels of analysis have to be
distinguished. On a general level, the middle is a morphosyntactic strategy to mark verbal stems
with specific semantic properties, as proposed, e.g. by Kemmer (1993). In what follows, I suggest
that the common semantic property of both types of middle verbs is that their arguments do not
display default (‘canonical’) control properties.18 Apart from this general property, the media
tantum and the differential middle forms differ in how the control properties deviate from the
default and in how this deviation comes about.
Both conceptually and historically, the differential middle readings are primary. Conceptually,
they provide a strategy to resolve a conflict between the classification of certain situations and
their morpho-syntactic realization. Historical data provide evidence that the media tantum
develop after both the direct reflexive and the anticausative reading in languages that encode the
middle function by reflexive verbs (see Hermodsson, 1952; Reichenkron, 1933; Selig, 1998 for
the historical development of the middle in Romance and Germanic, and the discussion in
Kaufmann, 2004). I therefore, assume that the existence of media tantum in middle marking
languages is a consequence of a reinterpretation of the device which derives the differential
readings. As will be shown in the next section, the specific way of construing the argument
structure of (differential) middle stems leads to the effect that the arguments have non-canonical
control properties. Once the device that derives middle stems is established in the verbal system,
the function of middle morphology is generalized to marking semantic verb classes with
properties similar to that of the differential readings, i.e. verbs with inherently non-canonical
control properties.19
The idea that the interaction of different types of control properties is relevant in middle voice
systems is due to Klaiman (1991). However, the notions of control that I make use of in the
following and my assumptions on how they are related differ from Klaiman’s.
18
‘Control’ is to be understood as ‘action control’ not as syntactic control. The relevance of control for the semantics of
the middle has been demonstrated by Klaiman (1991).
19
An anonymous reviewer raised the question why not all languages have middle morphology, given (a) the assumption
that middle morphology exists in order to encode noncanonical argument properties and (b) the fact that all speakers
should have the same ‘conceptual needs’. As already mentioned above, there are a number of different grammatical
strategies to deal with transitive/intransitive verbal pairs, namely deriving either the transitive or the intransitive variant of
a verbal pair by some morphological or syntactic process, use one form for both variants, or lexicalize two variants.
Which strategy a language employs depends partly on whether the base verbs in that language are preferably transitive or
intransitive. Since the middle is a detransitivizing strategy, it is only available for languages that tend to have transitive
base verbs. Moreover, the (productive) middle is a costly strategy since it doubles the inventory of lexical entries of
transitive verbs. In comparison, the number of verbs that actually are subject to the conceptual conflict is rather small:
causative/inchoative verbs and the even smaller class of verbs of body care. I would therefore assume, that although many
languages develop a special grammatical marking for the intransitive variant of these two verb classes, there are much less
languages that extend that device and develop a full fledged middle system. Note also that many languages use
noncanonical case marking (e.g., dative subjects of verbs of emotion and cognition) to achieve the same effect as verbally
marked media tantum in middle marking languages.
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4. The middle in Fula: analysis
4.1. The relevance of control properties
Verbs that are transitive and agentive in the active also occur in the middle and in the passive in
Fula. The distribution of the middle readings shows that the interpretation of the middle depends on
the semantics of the base verb as well as on the aspectual information of the verb form. Different
semantic verb classes give rise to different middle readings, which have to be licensed by specific
aspectual information. Whether a middle reading is available or not furthermore depends on the
sortal properties of the referent of the subject. As mentioned above, looto ‘wash (middle)’ can
receive the direct reflexive reading only if the referent of the subject is human. Klaiman (1991)
characterizes the relevant properties of the subject as the potential of the participant to control the
situation. The higher the rank of an individual on the animacy hierarchy is, the higher is his/her
potential to control a situation. In what follows, I call this kind of control properties sortal control.
Sortal control is to be understood as the inherent potentiality of an individual to control certain
situations. In order to be able to control a situation, an individual has to have certain sortal
properties. Different situations may require a different amount of sortal control properties. While
some situations can be controlled by a non-human animate or even an inanimate causer (e.g.,
breaking a window), others require a human controller (e.g., reading a book).
Since sortal control is characterized as the potentiality to control a situation, it is necessary to
specify under what circumstances a participant controls a situation. I assume that situation control
(or s-control) is a relation between a situation and one of its participants, as defined in (14).
(14)
SITUATION CONTROL (ontologically)
A participant p of a situation s controls s if p determines whether and when s takes
place and how long s lasts.
Note that according to (14), situation control does not presuppose intentionality so that an
individual can control a situation that it initiates accidentally.20 Furthermore, the individual who
controls the situation has to be a participant of the situation, but is not necessarily the agent of the
verb. The separation of situation control and agentivity is crucial for the analysis of the
differential readings of the middle presented here. The interpretation of the causative reflexive
reading illustrates the relevance of the separation most clearly. For convenience, a further
example is given in (15).
(15)
causative reflexive reading of the middle
a.
o
moor-ii=mo
‘S/he dressed his/her hair.’
3SG dress hair-PERF.ACT=3SG
b.
o
moor-ake
‘S/he got his/her hair dressed.’
3SG dress hair-PERF.MID
active
middle
A closer look at the causative reflexive reading reveals that although the agent performs the
action, the patient controls the situation in the sense of (14) in that s/he determines whether and
20
The notion of situation control that is relevant for middle voice systems thus differs from the notion of control that is
relevant for some active/inactive systems, where active and inactive can mark whether the action is performed
intentionally or unintentionally.
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when it takes place, i.e. the patient is the s-controller (controller of the situation). The
interpretation of the middle form thus differs from the interpretation of the active form with
respect to which argument is identified as the s-controller. Below, I show that the common
property of all differential middle readings is that the agent argument of the stem is not the
s-controller. Active and middle forms thus differ in that the control properties of active verbs are
canonical (the agent argument of the verb is the s-controller), while the control properties of
middle verbs are non-canonical.
However, not all situations are controllable. With respect to controllability, three types of
situations have to be distinguished:
(a)
(b)
(c)
situations which cannot be controlled by any of the participants (e.g., fading, dying),
situations which always have to be controlled by one of the participants (e.g., eating,
working, painting), and
situations that can be controlled by one of the participants if the participant has the
necessary sortal control properties (e.g., move, being located).
Whether the relevant situation is controllable or not is part of the semantic information of the
verb, more specifically, of the semantic predicates (for more details on the semantic representation
see section 4.2 below). Two classes of semantic predicates have to be distinguished:
(i)
(ii)
Activity predicates (PREDACT) are predicates that identify one of their arguments
as the participant that starts the situation and keeps it going, and thus controls the
(sub)situation encoded by the predicate.
Non-activity predicates (PRED) do not require any control properties of their arguments.
I call the control properties assigned by activity predicates to one of their arguments predicate
control. Predicate control is the crucial property of agent arguments. Note that arguments that are
assigned predicate control can only be saturated by NPs that refer to individuals with the
necessary sortal control properties.
Having introduced the notions of sortal control, predicate control, and s-control, we can
determine under which conditions the control properties of an argument are canonical. Whether
the control properties of the arguments of a verb are canonical or not depends on the mapping
between different types of control, as illustrated in (16). There are two configurations in which
control properties are canonical:
The control properties of an argument are canonical
(i)
(ii)
if an argument with high sortal control properties has predicate control and s-control,
if an argument with low sortal control properties has neither predicate control
nor s-control.
Accordingly, control properties are non-canonical if they deviate from this mapping in one way
or another.
In principle, more than one argument of a verb can be assigned predicate control (e.g., in the
case of causativized agentive verbs). In this case, the predicate controller that is less deeply
embedded in the causal chain (Croft, 1998) is the canonical s-controller. For convenience, I use
the notion canonical controller in order to refer to the argument with predicate control that is the
canonical s-controller.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
(16)
canonical control properties:
s-control
canonical (predicate) control
sortal control properties required by the verb
yes
j
yes
j
high
(human)
1691
no
j
no
j
low
(inanimate)
Before I turn to the question how the different types of control properties can be represented, I
briefly introduce some background information concerning the theoretical framework.
4.2. The theoretical framework
As mentioned in section 3, I adopt Bierwisch’s model of semantic representations in which word
meaning is represented on two levels: Semantic Form (SF) and Conceptual Structure (CS). SF
captures only those aspects of meaning that are grammatically relevant, while CS is a more
elaborate semantic representation which is part of the general cognitive system. In CS, the semantic
primitives of SF are interpreted and the SF parameters (i.e. unbound variables in the SF
representation) are specified by encyclopedic as well as contextual knowledge. The primitives of SF
are functors (predicates) of different logical types, which determine the number and types of their
arguments, together with a set of argument variables. In the following, I represent the SF in the
notation used in LDG (‘Lexical Decomposition Grammar’, see e.g., Wunderlich, 1997a, 1997b).
The SF representation of the (active) ditransitive verb give is illustrated in (17). Here, HAND
OVER, BECOME and POSS are primitives of type <e, <e, t>>, <t, t>, and <e, <e, t>> respectively.
x, y, z are individual variables (type e). Thematic roles are not represented in SF, since they are
not considered to be semantic primitives. The thematic properties of the arguments can be
inferred by the information of their functors. Note that the control properties are not yet
represented in the SF in (17).
(17)
HAND OVERACT (X,Z)
&
BECOME (POSS (Y,Z))
Crucially, SF is assumed to have a strictly binary structure. Even conjuncts are hierarchically
ordered, so that one of them is lower ranked (more deeply embedded) than another. ‘A & B’ is
always to be read as ‘[A [& B]]’, so that B is lower ranked than A. A consequence of the strict
hierarchical ordering of elements in SF is that they can be unambiguously ranked according to
their depth of embeddedness. The ranking of argument variables can then be used to constrain
u-Structure (argument structure) formation. The ranking of the elements in SF is illustrated best
by using the ‘Polish Notation’, in which the functors precede their arguments which follow them
in rising order (see Wunderlich, 1997b:102). The Polish Notation of the SF of give is shown in
(18a), the argument hierarchy in (18b).
u-Structure is derived by l-abstracting over those variables in SF that have to be mapped
into syntax. The ranking of the arguments in u-Structure mirrors their ranking in SF
(‘Hierarchy principle’): arguments that are more deeply embedded in SF are ordered to the left
in the sequence of l-abstractors.21 Argument saturation (functional application) proceeds from left
21
Different suggestions for the exact formulation of the ‘Hierarchy Principle’ have been made (see e.g. Bierwisch,
1997; Kaufmann, 1995; Wunderlich, 1997a). Which formulation is chosen depends on the assumptions about how SF
representations are structured.
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to right, so that arguments that are more deeply embedded in the SF will be realized closer to the
verb in the clause.
In general, all arguments are projected, unless the projection is lexically blocked. An
argument that occurs more than once in SF is projected to u-Structure only once. If it occurs
in the lowest SF position, this position determines its rank in u-Structure. Otherwise, its rank
in u-Structure is determined by its highest occurrence in the SF. The arguments of give that
are projected to the u-Structure are shown in (18c); the resulting u-Structure is illustrated in
(18d).
(18)
a.
b.
c.
d.
SF (Polish notation): & (BECOME (POSS (z)(y)))(HAND
argument hierarchy: z < y < z < x
projected arguments: z < y < x
u-Structure:
lz ly lx
OVERACT
(z)(x))
The open proposition that constitutes the SF of a verbal predicate is relativized to a
situation, which functions as the referential argument and is represented by the variable s
(Wunderlich, 1997a). This argument is represented as the rightmost argument in u-Structure.
Although the predicates in the SF-representation of a verb may relate to sub-events, this
is not captured in SF itself but may be inferred at the level of CS, due to the temporal
(aspectual) properties of the individual predicates. The SF-representation and the complete
u-Structure of give is shown in (19). For convenience, the grammatical functions of
the arguments are given below the u-Structure although this is not part of the lexical
representation.
(19)
lz ly lx ls {HAND
DO IO S
OVERACT
(x,z) &
BECOME (POSS
(y,z))}(s)
The semantic representation in (19) has to be read as follows: ‘s is an event in which x hands over
z and [as a result] it comes about that y possesses z’. Note that the causal relation between the
subevents is not explicitly represented in the SF. The SF-conjunction ‘&’ is a parameter which
can be interpreted as a causal or a contemporary connection between the subevents encoded by
the conjuncts. Which interpretation arises depends on the aspectual structure of the semantic
predicates (see Kaufmann, 1995).
4.3. The representation of active and differential middle stems
As mentioned before, there is a close relationship between active and middle verb forms
which can be observed most clearly in the case of change of state verbs. As mentioned above,
change of state verbs inflect for the middle if a corresponding causative form exists (see (5) and
(6)) but for the active otherwise (see (12)). In order to account for this dependency of middle
marking, I assume that the active and differential middle stems of a verb are derived from a
common root which determines the Semantic Form of both stems and thereby also the
predicate control properties of the arguments.22 The voice stems differ in that active stems project
all their semantic arguments into argument structure, whereas middle stems block the projection
22
Activa and media tantum are discussed in section 4.6.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
1693
of the agent.23 The derivation of active and (differential) middle stems is illustrated in (20). The
index ACT indicates that the relevant predicates are activity predicates, which assign predicate
control to their first argument. The index ‘c’ indicates that this argument is the canonical controller.
As illustrated in (20), the canonical controller (the agent) is not projected into the u-Structure of
the middle stem. The questions to be answered now is (a) how this argument structure may lead to an
agentive as well as a nonagentive reading (depending on the semantics of the base verb), and (b) in
which way the control properties of one of the arguments are non-canonical. To answer these
questions, some assumptions about the status of s-control in the middle voice have to be introduced.
A comparison of active, middle and passive voice of agentive verbs reveals that both in the
active and in the passive the canonical controller (the agent argument of the stem) is the
s-controller. In the active, the canonical controller/s-controller is realized as the subject, in
the passive it is not. In the middle, two cases have to be distinguished: agentive and nonagentive
readings. For now, I restrict the discussion to the agentive readings.
If the middle reading is agentive and refers to a particular situation, the subject is interpreted as
the s-controller. In most of the readings, it is difficult to decide whether s-control is associated
with the subject or with the agent argument. The interpretation of the causative reflexive reading
shows, however, that s-control cannot be a property of the agent argument. It thus seems that the
middle differs from active and passive in that the property of s-control is not invariantly
associated with the agent argument (i.e. the canonical controller). Since the subject is the
s-controller in all agentive readings of the middle, it is reasonable to assume that s-control is
associated with the highest argument position rather than with a specific thematic role.
Consequently, if the agent argument is not projected to u-Structure, a different argument occupies
this position and has to be interpreted as the s-controller.
Note, however, that only verbs that include an activity predicate in their representation require
an s-controller. The relation between the highest position in the u-Structure of agentive verbs on
the one hand, and s-control on the other, is formulated in (21).
(21)
THE GRAMMATICAL STATUS OF S-CONTROL
The highest thematic argument in the u-Structure of verbs that include an activity
predicate PREDACT in their SF carries a feature CNTR which identifies the referent of
the NP that saturates this argument as the s-controller of the situation characterized
by the verb.
23
An anonymous reviewer noted that since there are languages that allow the realization of the agent e.g., in the modal
and the passive reading, blocking of the agent cannot be a general property of middles. However, I do not think that the
mere fact of an overt agent realization necessarily points to its presence at argument structure. Agents could, for example,
be realized through adverbial phrases. The fact that in many languages it is not possible to realize the implicit agent
argument of a middle verb in the same way as the agent argument of a passive verb strongly suggests that the status of the
agent differs in both cases.
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(22) gives the final schematic representation of active and differential middle stems. For
comparison, a corresponding schematic representation of the passive is added in (23). Note
that in the passive, the implicit agent is still interpreted as the s-controller. This is due to the fact
that the passive operation only blocks the agent argument from linking but does not remove it
from the u-Structure. The effect of argument blocking is represented by the existential quantifier
in the position that carries the feature CNTR.
(23)
passive: ly 9x ls{PREDACT (xc,y)}(s)
CNTR
According to the representations in (22), the subjects of all verbs that display one of the
differential readings of the middle have to be interpreted as s-controllers. There are also cases,
however, where the subject is not the s-controller. In these cases, either the verb has
no agentive reading (anticausative reading, resultative reading) or no referential reading
(modal reading). In the next section, I argue that the interpretation of the highest argument as
the s-controller is only possible if this argument has the necessary control properties. Verbs
that do not provide an argument which can be interpreted as the s-controller are discussed in
section 4.5.
4.4. Middle stems that provide a non-canonical s-controller
Middle stems that provide a noncanonical s-controller are those that allow the reflexive
readings. As pointed out in section 2, not every verb allows these readings, even if the subject
argument has the relevant sortal control properties. As discussed in section 3, Arnotts
characterization of the relevant verb classes suggests that there must be a further conceptually
motivated specification of the patient argument. In order to capture the restrictions on the
reflexive readings, I assume that besides arguments with predicate control, only arguments that
are lexically specified as potential controllers (of the situation) can be interpreted as
s-controllers. Potential controllers are arguments that represent participants with a ‘special
interest’ in the situation, such as the patient arguments of verbs of body care. In contrast to
predicate controllers, arguments specified as potential controllers can be saturated by NPs
referring to inanimate individuals. Only if they function as s-controllers do they need to have the
necessary sortal control properties. In what follows, potential controllers are labelled with an
index ‘pc’ in the semantic representation.24
24
Note that although the specification as a potential controller is conceptually motivated, it is a lexical specification that
can vary from language to language.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
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(24) gives the lexical representation of the middle stem of 7 orno ‘dress’. The patient argument
occupies the highest argument position and is to be interpreted as the s-controller. Since the
patient is a potential controller, the interpretation is successful, provided that the NP that saturates
the argument has the relevant sortal control properties. For convenience, I label the highest u-role
with an index <+contr> if the argument is assumed to provide the necessary control properties,
and with <contr> otherwise. Note, however, that this information is provided by the NP that
saturates the argument, not by the verbal stem.
(24)
7orn- ‘dress’: ly<+contr> ls {DRESSACT (xc, ypc)}(s)
CNTR
The representation in (24) leaves the interpretation of the agent argument unspecified. Since the
agent is represented by a variable in the SF, it must be bound in some way or another. The binding
takes place at Conceptual Structure (CS). There are two possibilities for interpreting the agent,
which lead to the two reflexive readings. Either the agent is coindexed (coreferent) with the
s-controlling patient, or the agent is existentially bound (implicit). In the first case, there is only
one participant involved in the situation (direct-reflexive reading). In the second case, the
s-controlling patient is the head of a causal chain in which the agent is the causee acting on the
patient. Thus, the patient initiates the situation by causing the agent to perform the action on him
(causative reflexive reading).
As mentioned above (fn. 13), in languages like Greek and Spanish contextual information
determines which reading arises. If Arnott (1956, 1970) is right in that the readings exclude
each other in Fula, there has to be an additional lexical specification of how the agent can be
bound. In Kaufmann (2004) I suggested that in Fula the semantic predicates DRESS, WASH, etc.
are further classified as to whether the implicit agent has to be coreferent or noncoreferent
with the s-controlling patient. Predicates that require a coreferent agent are marked with an
index ‘=’, predicates that require a noncoreferent agent with an index ‘6¼’. The conceptual
specifications of the reflexive readings are added to the SF-representations in (25) and (26).
(25)
direct reflexive reading:
7orn-o ‘dress’: SF: ly<+contr> ls {DRESSACT= (xc, ypc)}(s)
CNTR
CS: x is coreferent with y
(26)
causative reflexive reading:
moor-o ‘have one’s hair dressed’25: SF: ly<+contr> ls {DRESS_HAIRACT6¼(xc, ypc)}(s)
CNTR
CS: 9x
The indirect reflexive reading can be analysed in the same way as the direct reflexive reading (‘‘I
perform an action for my own benefit.’’) or the causative reflexive reading (‘‘I let somebody
perform an action for my own benefit.’’). In both cases, the beneficiary is a potential controller
and functions as the s-controller in the middle. (27) gives the SF and the lexical representation of
the causative indirect reflexive middle reading of wu y- ‘lend’. In the middle reading, the
recipient is the s-controller who causes the agent to lend something to him. The agent is
existentially bound, as in the causative reflexive reading in (26).
25
Other than in English, both arguments of moor- are human. The literal translation would be ‘s.o. hair-dresses s.o.’.
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causative indirect reflexive reading:
a.
wu y- ‘lend’: {LENDACT (xc, y) & BECOME (POSS (zpc, y))}(s)
b.
wu y-o ‘borrow’:
SF: ly lz<+contr> ls {LENDACT (xc, y) & BECOME (POSS (zpc, y))}(s)
CNTR
CS: 9x
Note that the indirect reflexive reading is not a productive reading in Fula. The restrictedness
of the reading presumably is motivated by the general restrictedness of ditransitive verbs in
Fula. There are very few ditransitive base verbs (Sylla, 1979). Most ditransitive verbs are
derived by the so called dative extension which introduces a beneficiary argument. The
restrictedness of the indirect reflexive reading can be accounted for if one assumes that only
very few beneficiary arguments are lexically specified as potential controllers in Fula.
Specifically, arguments introduced by the dative extension are not specified as a potential
controllers.26
Finally, the agentive anticausative reading of the middle (see (6)) is derived in the same way,
as illustrated in (28).
(28)
agentive anticausative reading:
a.
moo7t-a ‘assemble’(tr.):
lx<+contr> ly ls {MANIP (xc,y) &
BECOME ASSEMBLED(y
pc
)}(s)
CNTR
b.
moo7t-o ‘assemble’(intr.):
ly<+contr> ls {MANIP (xc,y) &
pc
BECOME ASSEMBLED(y )}(s)
CNTR
CS: x coreferent with y
Note that although the agent argument is not projected to argument structure, this does not mean
that the analysis of the agentive middle readings qualify as an ‘unaccusative’ analysis, i.e. an
analysis in which the agent argument is not available in the syntax. As authors like Alsina (1996)
and Reinhart and Siloni (2004, 2005) have argued, the problem with unaccusative analyses of
reflexive verbs is that they cannot account for the fact that reflexive verbs have unergative
(agentive) properties in many languages. The crucial point of my analysis is that agentive
properties are not determined by the SF of the verb alone, but additionally by the information
associated with the highest argument position. The (agentive) property of being the s-controller is
added to the thematic information of the argument realized in this position. Therefore, middle
forms that have an s-controller are to be expected to behave like unergative verbs, although the
canonical controller is not available in syntax.
4.5. Middle stems that do not provide a non-canonical s-controller
In this section, I discuss the cases in which the middle stem does not provide a potential
controller. Among the readings of the middle, there are three in which the subject obviously does
26
Since in some languages (e.g. Ancient Greek) the indirect reflexive reading is very productive, I assume that
languages differ with respect to which arguments may be specified as potential controllers. See also the discussion in
section 5 on the crosslinguistic parametrization of the middle.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
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not have the necessary sortal properties to control the situation and therefore violates the
condition formulated in (21): the (nonagentive) anticausative reading, the resultative reading and
the modal reading. The readings differ in how the violation is overcome.
4.5.1. The anticausative reading: reduction of event structure
The (nonagentive) anticausative reading is restricted to verbs that specify the effect of a
manipulation of the patient, rather than the manner in which the agent manipulates the patient.
These verbs are semantically represented as in (29a). MANIP represents an unspecific manipulation
of a patient by an agent. The underspecified connector ‘&’ is to be interpreted as a causal relation
between the subevents encoded by the two semantic predicates (see Kaufmann, 1995).
(29)
a.
ma77 -a ‘close’: ly lx ls {MANIP (xc,y) &
BECOME CLOSED
(y)}(s)
CNTR
b.
ma77 -o: ly<-contr> ls {MANIP (xc,y) &
BECOME CLOSED
(y)}(s) (to be revised)
CNTR
In (29), the patient argument is not specified as a potential controller. Therefore, it cannot
function as the s-controller when the agent is not projected to the u-Structure in the middle (29b).
Given the analysis introduced in the previous sections, the following problem arises: Under the
assumption that the grammatical assignment of s-control is ontologically motivated, the
s-controller represents the participant that brings the situation about. Thus, if no s-controller can
be identified, the situation characterized by the representation in (29b) cannot occur.
As the anticausative reading shows, the situation encoded by the middle is in fact not the one
encoded by the representation in (29b), but only a subsituation of it. The causing subevent
(including the agent) is not part of the situation. Given the assumptions about s-control
introduced above, the reason why the agent cannot be interpreted as being part of the situation if
no alternative s-controller is available is that the agent can only perform his/her role in the action
if the situation is initiated by someone. If there is no other s-controller, the action has to be
initiated by the agent him/herself. This, however, is excluded by the representation, since the
agent argument does not occupy the highest position in the u-Structure. It follows for ontological
reasons that either the agent has to be excluded from the situation since there is no s-controller, or
the interpretation must fail. The latter is obviously not the case. Instead, the event structure of the
middle is reduced compared to the event structure of the corresponding active stem so that the
agent is not part of the situation anymore.
What is needed now is a mechanism that accounts for the fact that the event structure (i.e. the
referential properties of the verb) changes if the first argument in argument structure cannot
control the situation.27 A first step is to assume that the condition which associates s-control with
the highest argument position of the u-Structure of activity verbs is an instance of a more general
condition which associates the highest argument position of the u-Structure with the first
participant involved in the situation. The intuitive assumption is that the beginning of a
27
The assumption that an additional device is necessary in order to derive the anticausative reading is motivated by the
observation that in the historical development of the middle readings in Romance and German, the anticausative reading
with an inanimate patient develops after both the direct reflexive reading (corresponding to Fula looto ‘wash’) and the
anticausative reading with an animate (agentive) patient (corresponding to Fula moo7 to ‘assemble’). It is reasonable to
assume that the anticausative reading with an animate patient is derived along the lines of the direct reflexive reading first,
and that the device that licenses the anticausative reading with an inanimate patient is established later. Interestingly,
media tantum seem to turn up as soon as the anticausative reading with an inanimate patient is established.
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non-stative situation characterized by some verb is determined by some activity or change of one of
the participants and thereby defines the beginning of a ‘causal chain’ (Croft, 1998). The ‘behaviour’
of the other participants is not relevant for the situation until this participant is ‘involved’. A
situation of eating, for example, does not start with the arriving of the meal but with the eater
attacking it. Similarly, the falling of a leaf starts with the first movement of the leaf, not with the tree
being located where the situation will take place. The condition is formulated in (30).
(30)
– FIRST PARTICIPANT CONDITION
The highest argument in u-Structure represents the participant who is the first to
be involved in the situation.
HIGHEST ARGUMENT
This condition explains why the event structure of a verb form depends on which semantic
argument is projected to the highest argument position. Since the s-controller is the participant
who initiates the situation, it follows that the highest argument of an activity verb has to be the
s-controller, as stated in (21).
Although (30) motivates the relation between event structure interpretation and the subject, it
does not provide a formal means to exclude part of the SF from the interpretation. To account for
this, further assumptions on the interaction of the event structure of a stem and the u-Structure are
necessary.
Note that the anticausative reading of the middle is only available if (a) the manner of
manipulation that causes the change is unspecified and (b) the situation encoded by the active
stem includes a subsituation which can also take place without the influence of a causer. The
former restriction guarantees that no relevant information of the verb is lost. If the manner of
manipulation is unspecified, the only information that the verb provides about the agent is that he
is the one who initiates the situation—which is approximately the information that is negated if
the agent is not the s-controller. From the latter restriction we can conclude that the reduction of
the referential properties of the verb is licensed by the condition in (30): Since the u-Structure
identifies the patient as the first participant involved in the event encoded by the verb, the
(middle) stem can only refer to the (sub)event of which the patient is the first participant.
Since subevents are not represented in the SF, the question arises how the referential argument of
the middle stem can be made available. To capture the interaction between the u-Structure and the
referential properties of the stem, I assume that (at least) in middle voice systems, the referential
argument of the stem depends on the thematic arguments of the u-Structure. Since according to (30)
the highest argument must refer to the first participant of the situation encoded by the verb, the
situation variable is related only to that part of the SF that is in accordance with this requirement.
The specific assumptions on the representation of verbs in middle voice systems are listed
below.
The semantic representation of a verbal root is an open proposition without an event
argument:
PRED1
(x,....) & .... &
PREDn
(...., z)
The semantic representation of a verbal stem is a proposition that is related to a situation s.
The u-Structure is represented by the sequence of l-abstractors.
lz .... lx ls {PRED1 (x,....) & .... &
PREDn
(...., z)}(s)
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
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CONDITION ON THE REFERENTIAL ARGUMENT
A (proper or inproper) part PREDi & . . . & PREDn of the semantic representation of a verbal root
can be related to an event argument s that serves as the referential argument of the verb, if
- the highest argument in the u-Structure of the verb is linked to the highest semantic
argument of the predicate PREDi, and
- the lowest argument in the u-Structure of the verb is linked to the lowest semantic
argument of the predicate PREDn, and
- PREDi & ... & PREDn can be instantiated by ontologically independent situations.
The CONDITION ON THE REFERENTIAL ARGUMENT states that depending on the u-Structure of an
individual stem, a part of the complex SF of the root can be cut out and be related to an event
argument that functions as the referential argument of the stem.
Finally, the remaining parts of the SF of the root have to be dealt with. Given the fact that
aspectual forms that refer to result states always imply the existence of the preceding event, I
assume that the remaining SF predicates are still part of the representation. They are related to
their own event arguments, which are existentially bound.
Those parts of the semantic representation that are not related to s are related to other
(existentially bound) event arguments. Event arguments that are existentially bound are
interpreted as entailments.28
(31) gives a schematic representation of a verb stem with a referential argument that is related
only to a proper part of the SF. The relevant part is in italic.
(31)
ly lx ls 9s0 9s00 {PRED1 (...)}(s0 ) &
{PREDi (x,...) & PREDj (...,y)}(s) & {PREDn (...)}(s00 )
Some further remarks are in order here to motivate the assumption that those parts of the SF of
anti-causative middle stems that are not related to the referential argument of the verb are
existentially bound and interpreted as entailments. Evidence for this assumption is given by the
interpretation of some German data. In German, the middle readings are encoded by reflexive
verbs. As illustrated in (32), there are some minimal pairs of reflexive (anticausative) and
unaccusative change of state verbs. The reflexive verbs, i.e. those that alternate with a
nonreflexive causative verb can be easily combined with a durch ‘by’ phrase that specifies the
cause of the change, whereas the combination of durch with the nonreflexive verbs is marked.29
(32)
a.
b.
c.
28
Der Stahlträger senkte sich durch das Gewicht.
?Der Stahlträger sank durch das Gewicht.
‘The steel girder sank because of (lit. by) the weight.’
Das Wasser rötete sich durch das Blut.
‘The water reddened because of (lit. by) the blood.’
?Sie errötete durch die Beleidigung.
‘She blushed because of (lit. by) insult.’
Die Tür öffnete sich durch den Wind.
?Die Tür ging durch den Wind auf.
‘The door opened because of (lit. by) the wind.’
See Engelberg (2000) for the idea that the event structure of a verb can include entailed subevents.
Similar examples in French are discussed by Labelle (1992). Note that the realization of an animate causer is not
possible. The non-reflexive constructions improve if the durch phrase is fronted.
29
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I take the difference in acceptability as evidence for the fact that in the case of the reflexive verbs
the causing situation is part of the semantic representation even though it is not a subsituation of
the situation characterized by the verb.
The anticausative reading of the middle now can be represented as illustrated in (33). Note that
if the activity predicate MANIPACT is not part of the proposition that is relativized to the referential
argument, the highest argument is not specified by the feature CNTR.
(33)
anticausative reading of the middle
c
semantic representation of the root:
MANIP (x ,y) &
a. active: all arguments projected to u-structure
ma77-a ‘close’(tr.):
ly lx ls {MANIP (xc,y) & BECOME (CLOSED(y))}(s)
BECOME (CLOSED
(y))
CNTR
b.
middle: projection of the agent blocked
ma77-o ‘close’(intr.):
ly<-contr> ls 9s’ {MANIP (xc,y)}(s’) & {BECOME (CLOSED(y))}(s)
In principle, the resultative reading of the middle can be derived in the same way as the
anticausative reading.30 As illustrated in section 3, the resultative reading arises in the stative
aspect if the verb provides a result state. If the first argument of the result state and the first
argument of the preceding (sub)event are coreferent and have the same control properties (i.e., if
they are either controllers or noncontrollers in both subevents), the active form is used. But if the
control properties of the first argument of the result state differ from those of the first argument of
the preceding event, a middle form is used. While many intransitive change of state verbs have a
resultative active form, there are not many transitive verbs with an active resultative form, since
the agent usually is not involved in the result state. Resultative middle forms of transitive verbs,
on the other hand, are frequent. Their interpretation corresponds to the adjectival passive in
English. Examples for resultatives in the active and in the middle are given in (34a,b) and (34c),
respectively.
(34)
a.
b.
c.
event reading
resultative reading
o tekk-ii
o ,on tekk-i
(intransitive active)
3SG become fat-PERF.ACT
3SG STAT become fat-RPERF.ACT
‘He/she has put on weight.’ ‘He/she is fat.’
mi naEEg-ii=mo
mi ,on naEEg-i=mo
(transitive active)
I arrest-PERF.ACT=3SG
I STAT arrest-RPERF.ACT=3SG
‘I have arrested him.’
‘I have got him under arrest, in my clutches.’
o nam-ii
gawri
gawri ndin ,on nam-ii
(intransitive middle)
3SG grind-PERF.ACT grain
grain CL10 STAT grind-RPERF.MID
‘He/she ground the grain.’ ‘The grain is ground.’
For reasons of space, I will not go into the details of the representation of the stative reading here.
The important point for my purpose is that with respect to control properties, stative active and
30
In order to derive the resultative reading along the lines of the analysis of the anticausative reading, the result state has
to be represented by an independent conjunct in the SF. The complete SF of ma77 - ‘open’ thus would be {MANIP (xc,y)} &
{BECOME (CLOSED(y))} & {CLOSED(y)}.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
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middle forms behave as the corresponding perfective and imperfective forms. For a more detailed
analysis of the resultative reading I refer to Kaufmann (2004).
The aim of this section was to show that the referential interpretation of the middle form
depends on whether the highest argument in u-Structure can be interpreted as the first participant
of the situation that is characterized by the semantic representation of the verb. If there is no
s-controller in the middle, a referential interpretation is only available if a subsituation can be
identified for which no s-controller is needed. As the modal reading shows, a further reading may
arise if no referential interpretation is possible.
4.5.2. The modal reading
The modal reading of the middle is the only reading possible for verbs that provide neither a
potential s-controller other than the agent nor an independent subsituation. For convenience, the
relevant example is repeated in (35). The representation of the middle stem yar- ‘drink’ is given
in (36).
(35)
a.
b.
(36)
o
yar-ii=,am
s/he drink-PERF.ACT=CL22
,am yar-oto
na
CL22 drink-IMPERF.MID Q
yar-o ‘drink’: ly<-contr> ls
‘S/he drank it.’
active
‘Is it drinkable?’
middle
DRINKACT(x
pc
,y)(s)
CNTR
As every activity verb, yar- ‘drink’ requires the highest argument to be an s-controller. The
patient of yar- cannot be the s-controller in the middle because it is not specified as a potential
controller. Thus, neither the direct reflexive nor the causative reflexive reading is licensed.
Consequently, the agent cannot be interpreted as a participant of the situation (cf. the discussion
in section 4.5.1). However, the event structure of this type of verb cannot be reduced either, since
there is no part of the SF that could be related to an event argument representing an independent
subevent.
Thus, the modal reading is the only middle reading in which the control requirements
associated with the highest argument position are not met. The NP that saturates the argument
cannot be interpreted as an s-controller, nor can the event structure be reduced so that an
s-controller is no longer necessary. As the example in (35b) illustrates, this does not make the
sentence ungrammatical but only restricts its interpretation: there is no way to use the middle
form to refer to a particular situation. As a consequence, only a nonreferential reading is
available: the agent and the situation argument have to be generically bound. Note that
the generic reading is not due to the middle itself but to the imperfective aspect, which always
allows a generic interpretation in Fula. Thus, the modal reading is restricted to the imperfective
aspect.
The assumption that the generic interpretation is a consequence of the unavailability of the
referential reading is in accord with Löbner’s consideration on the source of genericity. Löbner
(2000:290ff) argues that genericity can come about if the predication involves at least one
parameter that is not referentially anchored in the situation of utterance; e.g., the generic
interpretation of characterizing sentences with bare plural subjects such as Dogs bark arises if the
grammatical form of the verb (here: simple present) does not allow its referential anchoring to
any particular event. In this case, the generic reading of the subject is a consequence of the nonanchorability of the event. Since the event argument cannot be anchored, the agent argument
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cannot be anchored either. Thus, the sentence can only serve as a categorization of an
unanchorable variable.
The fact that only middle forms which do not allow a referential interpretation receive a
generic reading supports Löbner’s claim. In the case of the middle, though, the reason of the
unanchorability is not a property of a grammatical category but the fact that events with the
properties required by the middle stem cannot exist for ontological reasons. The reason why the
relevant middle constructions cannot be interpreted as characterizing sentences but have to get a
modal interpretation is that even for characterizing sentences that involve an activity verb, the
initiation of the relevant situation must be possible. I assume that the modal meaning component
serves to introduce the information that situations of the type characterized by the verb are
controllable and therefore initiable. This information is not supported by the u-Structure of the
middle verb form itself since no s-controller of the activity can be identified.
The modal reading does not belong to the core readings of the middle, i.e. it is not found in all
middle marking languages. I therefore assume that the existence of the modal reading in a
particular language depends on whether there is a device that provides the modal meaning
component.31
Generic sentences are usually represented by means of a genericity operator that relates two
open formulas (the restrictor and the scope) and binds all free variables (see, e.g., Krifka et al.,
1995). Löbner (2000) proposes to analyse the genericity operator as a free-choice operator 98. A
variable from a domain D, predicated of by P and bound by this operator can be conceived of as a
representative of D as a whole as far as the predication P is concerned. The modal reading thus
can be schematically represented as in (37).32
(37)
modal reading:
ly<-contr> 98x 98s [DRINKACT (xc, y)(s):
POSSIBLE (CNTR
(x, s))]
CNTR
According to the representation in (37) there is a representative agent x which is able to control a
representative situation s in which y is drunk by x. The dispositional interpretation is due to the
modal operator that has to be independently accessible in a language in order to license the reading.
The availability of the modal reading reveals that the feature CNTR encodes a dependency
relation between the referent of the highest argument (the subject) and the referential anchoring
of the situation argument. Referential anchoring of the situation argument is only possible if the
referent of the highest argument (who represents the first participant of the event) has the
properties that are necessary to initiate the situation.
Table 4 illustrates how the different verb classes and the aspectual information influence the
available readings of the middle. For almost all agentive transitive verbs at least one of the
differentiating readings of the middle is available. Some verb classes allow for more than one
reading. Which reading arises depends on aspect but also on the sortal properties of the subject. If
the subject of loot- ‘wash’ is human, the verb will preferably get the direct reflexive interpretation
in the imperfective. If it is inanimate, however, it can only get the modal reading.
In the last part of this section, I discuss briefly how the activa and media tantum can be
characterized with respect to their control properties.
31
In Ancient Greek, for example, the modal reading is not a reading of the middle but of verbal adjectives. Languages
with middle reflexives often require the realization of an adverbial that carries the modal meaning component.
32
I leave open the question how the negative modal reading is to be represented.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
1703
Table 4
Interaction of verb classes and aspectual information
Verb class (active)
Middle reading
Causative change of state verbs
Transitive verbs of body care
Perfective and imperfective aspect
Stative aspect
Imperfective aspect
Anticausative reading
Direct or causative
reflexive reading
Resultative reading
Resultative reading
Modal reading
Modal reading
Resultative reading
Modal reading
Other transitive verbs
implying a result state
Other transitive verbs
Modal reading
4.6. Control properties of activa and media tantum
The fact that verbs borrowed from Hausa are classified as middle inflecting stems shows that
stem classification is not always semantically motivated. As a consequence, idiosyncrasies or
exceptions to the general picture may emerge. The conditions for active and middle stems
proposed in (38) hold only for the semantically transparent cases.
(38)
a.
b.
Activa tantum are verbs with inherently canonical control properties.
Media tantum are verbs with inherently non-canonical control properties.
As illustrated in (16), control properties are canonical if arguments with (lexically selected) high
sortal control properties have predicate control and s-control, and arguments with (lexically
selected) low sortal control properties have neither predicate control nor s-control. The examples
in (12) show that among the activa tantum, there are intransitive agentive verbs as well as change
of state verbs. Arguments of agentive verbs have canonical control properties if (a) they are
assigned predicate control by the verb (i.e. they are arguments of activity predicates; represented
as PREDACT), (b) they have sortal control properties according to the selectional restrictions of the
verb, and (c) they have s-control. Arguments of state verbs and change of state verbs
have canonical control properties if (a) they are not assigned predicate control by the verb
(i.e. they are arguments of non-activity predicates; represented as PRED), (b) they need not have
sortal control properties according to the selectional restrictions of the verb, and (c) they do not
have s-control.
SF-representations of the two types of activa tantum are given in (39). Predicate control and
sortal control is represented by an index ‘c’ and ‘sc’, respectively.
(39)
Activa tantum: canonical control properties
representation
examples
lx ls {PREDACT(xc,sc)}(s)
jala ‘laugh’, woja ‘scream’
CNTR
lx ls {PRED(x)}(s)
lx ls {BECOME PRED(x)}(s)
mawna ‘be big’, tekka ‘be thick’ (stative)
mawna ‘become big’, tekka ‘become thick’
Media tantum are lexically specified as having non-canonical control properties. There are a
number of ways in which the control properties can deviate since three types of control properties
interact, and since there can be more than one argument with non-canonical control properties.
Most of the semantic classes in (13a) can be subsumed under the mismatches illustrated in (40):
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In the case of verbs of self-controlled directed motion, an s-controller with sortal control
properties has no predicate control. According to Arnott (1970) and Klaiman (1991) verbs like
jippo ‘descend’ and daro ‘stand, stop’ require that the referent of their argument controls the
change of location. In the case of manner of motion verbs like ‘walk’ or ‘run’ this restriction can
be attributed to the manner of motion predicate. Verbs of directed motion like ‘descend’ and
‘stand, stop’ do not contain an activity predicate, since motion and location are not necessarily
under the control of the moved/located individual. The semantic predicates that constitute the SF
of these verbs therefore do not assign predicate control. The requirement of s-control and, as a
consequence, sortal control is thus a stipulated lexical property of these verbs which is not
motivated by the semantic representation.
Intransitive verbs of emotion like sun- ‘be sad’, dunE - ‘be content’ also require an argument
with high sortal control properties without assigning predicate control to this argument. The
reason for the sortal control properties being required is not that the participant must be able to
control the situation. They rather are a side effect since having emotions is a property of
those individuals that also happen to have high sortal control properties. The argument is
no s-controller, since the duration of emotions is not under the control of the experiencer.
For the same reason, arguments of verbs of cognition can be classified as not having
s-control.33 In this case, however, the verb requires not only sortal control but also assigns
predicate control.
A fourth class of stems differs from the others in that the second argument of the SF-relation
has noncanonical control properties. Here, a patient argument which is supposed to have no
control properties is required to have sortal control, i.e. to be able to act in some way or other. (41)
shows examples of four types of media tantum and their representations. More research has to be
done in order to arrive at a fully satisfying analysis of the control properties of activa and media
tantum, but I will not go into any more details here.
(41)
Media tantum: non-canonical control properties
representation
examples
lx ls {PRED(xsc)}(s)
daro ‘stand’, jippo ‘descend (from)’
CNTR
lx ls {PRED(xsc)}(s)
lx ls {PREDACT(xc,sc)}(s)
ly lxls {PREDACT(xc,ysc)}(s)
suno ‘be sad’, duE go ‘be content’
hiimo ‘think’, miilo ‘ponder’
faago ‘pursue’, barro ‘threaten’
CNTR
33
While this explanation seems to be reasonable for verbs like hiimo ‘think’, it is less so for verbs like miilo ‘ponder’ and
hiso ‘calculate’.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
1705
5. Middle readings cross-linguistically
In Fula, middle formation is fully productive since a middle stem exists for every transitive
agentive verb. A comparison of the middle readings in Fula with the readings observed crosslinguistically reveals that not all readings that are available in other languages are attested in Fula
as well (and vice versa). For illustration, compare the examples in (42) to (49), which illustrate
the differential middle readings in Ancient Greek (AG), German (Ger) and Spanish (Sp).34 As the
examples show, the morphosyntactic exponents of the middle differ from language to language.
Whereas in Fula voice is encoded by fused inflectional suffixes together with aspect, polarity,
mood and discourse perspective, active and middle forms combine with different person suffixes
in Ancient Greek. In many European languages, the exponents of the middle are nonthematic
(weak) reflexive pronouns.
(42)
(43)
34
direct reflexive reading
active
a. ksuré-ō
shave-1SG.A
‘I shave (someone).’
b. Du rasierst den Jungen
you shave.2SG the boy
‘You are shaving the boy.’
c. Juan lava los pantalones
Juan washes the trousers
‘Juan is washing the trousers.’
causative reflexive reading
active
a. keı́r-ō
‘I shave (someone)’
b. middle reading not available35
c. Pedro afeita Juan
P.
shaves J.
‘Pedro shaves Juan.’
middle
ksuréo-mai
shave-1SG.M
‘I have shaved.’
Der Junge rasiert sich
the boy shaves REFL
‘The boy is shaving.’
Juan se lava
Juan REFL washes
‘Juan is washing.’
middle
keı́ro-mai
‘I get myself shaved’
AG
Ger
Sp
AG
Ger
Pedro se afeita en la barberı́a
Sp
P.
REFL shaves in the barber shop
‘Pedro gets himself shaved at the barber’s.’
The Greek examples are taken from Risselda (1987), Rijksbaron (1984) and Perel’muter (1988).
Languages that do not have the causative reflexive reading of the middle can employ a reflexive causative construction
instead. German and French use this strategy:
(i)
Hans lässt sich (von Maria) rasieren
‘John gets himself shaved (by Mary).’
(ii)
Jean s’est fait raser (par Marie)
Interestingly, as an anonymous reviewer pointed out, causative reflexive constructions can get a non-intentional reading as
well.
(iii) Hans hat sich (von einem Bus) überfahren lassen
‘John got himself run down (by a bus).’
(iv)
Jean s’est fait écraser (par un autobus).
I assume that the examples in (iii) and (iv) are (nonagentive) anticausative middles of what is called the ‘lassen-Passiv’ in
German, illustrated in (v).
(v)
Hans hat ihn von einem Bus überfahren lassen.
‘John let him be run down by a bus.’
lit.: ‘John let him run down by a bus.’
The derivation of the anticausative reading here corresponds to that of sich verletzen ‘hurt oneself/get hurt’, which also
has an agentive (s-control) and a nonagentive (no s-control) reading.
35
1706
(44)
(45)
(46)
(47)
(48)
36
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
indirect reflexive reading
active
a. misthó-ō
rent-1SG.A
‘I rent (something to someone)’
b. Ich lieh ihm
das Buch
I lent him.DAT the book.ACC
‘I lent him the book.’
c. Juan aquiló un coche a Pedro
J.
rented a car
to Pedro
‘Juan rented Pedro a car.’
middle
misthoû-mai
rent-1SG.M
‘I rent (something)’
Er lieh sich das Buch
He lent REFL the book
‘He borrowed the book.’
Pedro se aquiló un coche
P.
REFL rented a car
‘Pedro rented a car.’
anticausative reading
active
a. egeı́r-ō
‘I wake (someone) up’
b. Sie schlieben die Tür
they close
the door
‘They are closing the door.’
c. Juan rompe la cuerda
J.
tears the rope
‘Juan tears the rope.’
middle
egeı́ro-mai
‘I wake up’
Die Tür schliebt sich
the door closes
REFL
‘The door is closing.’
La cuerda se rompe
the rope REFL tears
‘The rope tears.’
resultative reading
active
a. oytádz-ō
‘I wound (someone)’
b. middle reading not available
c. middle reading not available
modal reading
active
a. middle reading not available
b. Ich lese das Buch
‘I read the book.’
c. Juan come estas frutas
J.
eats these fruits
‘Juan is eating these fruits.’
reciprocal reading36
active
a.
middle
oýtas-tai
‘he is wounded’
AG
Ger
Sp
AG
Ger
Sp
AG
Ger
Sp
middle
Das Buch liest sich leicht
‘The book reads easily.’
Estas frutas se comen
these fruits REFL eat.3PL
‘These fruits are edible.’
middle
hoi athlētaı̀ ēgōnı́tso-nto
the athletes compete.PAST-3PL.M
‘The athletes competed.’
AG
Ger
Sp
AG
From the data available to me, it is not clear whether the reciprocal reading of middle is a differential reading in
Ancient Greek and Spanish (i.e. whether a corresponding active form exists) or whether the verbs in (48a,c) are to be
classified as media tantum. In German, the reciprocal reading is productive. See also Plank (2006) for an overview of the
morphosyntax of semantically reciprocal verbs in German.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
b.
c.
(49)
Sie umarmte ihn
‘She embraced him.’
Sie umarmten sich
‘They embraced.’
Nos reunı́amos en casa de Juan
REFL.1PL met.1PL in house of J.
‘We met in Juans’s house.’
1707
Ger
Sp
passive reading
a. ho anēr tseugnu-si tous hippous
active
AG
the man yoke-3SG.ACT the horses
‘The man is yoking the horses.’
hoi hippoi tseugnu-ntai hupo tou andros
middle
the horses yoke-3PL.MID by the man
‘The horses are being yoked by the man.’
b. middle reading not available
Ger
c. active
middle
Juan publicó el libro en 1952
El libro se publicó en 1952
Sp
J.
published the book in 1952
the book REFL published in1952
‘Juan published the book in 1952.’
‘The book was published in 1952.’
As the examples show, there is considerable crosslinguistic variation with respect to the available
middle readings. In order to arrive at a deeper understanding of why so many languages employ
morphosyntactic devices to mark middle readings, but still differ in the range of available
readings, the grammatical properties of the middle in the individual languages have to be taken
into account. A uniform analysis thus not only has to account for the observable polysemy of the
middle, but also for the language specific differences.
Readings that occur in all middle marking languages are the direct reflexive reading and the
anticausative reading. I assume that these readings are the core readings of the middle. The core
readings are conceptually motivated, as discussed in section 3. Readings that do not occur in all
middle marking languages are the resultative reading, the modal reading, the passive reading, the
causative reflexive reading, the indirect reflexive reading, and the reciprocal reading.
I assume that the crosslinguistic variation follows from language specific differences with
respect to the devices that are necessary for the interpretation of the individual readings and from
independent grammatical properties.37 A number of properties that determine which readings
may arise have already been identified in the analysis of the middle in section 4. These properties
are listed in (50) together with a reference to the analysis of the readings for which they are
relevant.
(50) Language specific parameters that influence the range of the middle readings
- Which arguments can be specified as a potential controller?
a) theme/patient ! necessary to license the direct reflexive (25) and the causative
reflexive reading (26),
b) beneficiary ! necessary to license the indirect reflexive and the causative
indirect reflexive reading (27)
37
An anonymous reviewer asked for an explanation of the fact that some southern French dialects allow the causative
reflexive reading (Je me suis coupé les cheveux ‘I got myself a haircut’), while Standard French and Parisian French do
not. According to the parameters given in (50), the southern dialects must (a) allow that the s-controller and the canonical
controller are not coreferent and (b) allow existential binding of the implicit canonical controller.
1708
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
- How can the implicit canonical controller be bound?
a) by coindexation (coreference with the s-controller) ! necessary to license the
direct (25) and indirect reflexive reading,
b) by existential binding (noncoreference with the s-controller) ! necessary to
license the causative reflexive reading (26),
- Can the s-controller be noncoreferent with the canonical controller?
! necessary to license the causative reflexive reading (26),
- If there is no s-controller, are there devices that relate the event argument to a
subsituation?
a) event reduction ! necessary to license the anticausative reading (28),
b) stative/resultative aspect ! necessary to license the resultative reading
- If there is no s-controller, are there devices that license
a) the generic reading of non-referential verbs (e.g., imperfective aspect), and
b) the modal interpretation of non-controlled events
! necessary to license the modal reading (37)
Two of the middle readings illustrated above are not accounted for by the parameters listed in
(50), namely the reciprocal reading and the passive reading.
To the best of my knowledge, the reciprocal reading of the middle is restricted to languages
that allow a reciprocal interpretation of reflexives in general. In these languages, the reciprocal
interpretation of the reflexive is possible if (a) a reciprocal interpretation is plausible according to
the semantics of the verb, and (b) the NP that serves as the antecedent can be interpreted
distributively (see, e.g., Dalrymple et al., 1994, Dalrymple et al., 1998). An example of a
reflexivized verb with a non-middle reciprocal interpretation in German is given in (51a). In
contrast to the reflexive verb with middle reciprocal reading in (51b), the nonmiddle reflexivized
verb cannot be passivized (51c,d), cannot occur in presentational sentences (51e,f), and the
corresponding nominalized infinitive tends to be realized with a reflexive (51g,h).38
(51)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
38
Die Männer beobachten sich
the men
watch
REFL
‘The men watch each other.’
Die Männer streiten sich
the men
argue REFL
‘The men argue with each other.’
?Danach wurde
sich ständig
beobachtet
after that AUX.PAST.PASS REFL constantly watched.PASS
‘After that, they constantly watched each other.’
In meiner Wohnung wird
sich nicht gestritten!
in my appartment AUX.PRES.PASS REFL not argued
‘It is not allowed to argue in my appartment.’
?Es beobachteten sich drei Frauen mit Ferngläsern
it watched
REFL three women with binoculars
‘Three women watched each other with binoculars.’
The corpus data cited in (51g,h) are from the Cosmas Corpus of the German Language Institute (IdS) in Mannheim
(www.ids-mannheim.de).
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
f.
g.
h.
1709
Es stritten sich drei Männer in einer Kneipe
it argued REFL three men
in a pub
‘Three men argued in a pub.’
kleine Psycho-Dramen, etwa das Sich-Beäugen zweier [. . .] Potentaten
little psycho-dramas, e.g. the REFL-gazing of two
potentates
‘little psycho-dramas, e.g., the gazing at each other of two potentates ’
(Die Zeit 1985)
in der Kneipe, wo
er einem Paar beim Küssen zusieht
in the pub
where he a couple at the kissing watches
‘in the pub, where he is watching a couple kissing’
(from Frankfurter Rundschau 1997)
In middle marking languages that allow for the reciprocal interpretation of morphologically
reflexive verbs, the reciprocal reading of the middle can be derived in the same way as the direct
reflexive reading, i.e. by coindexation of the implicit agent with the (noncanonical) s-controller.
Which verbs allow this reading is conceptually determined, but lexically restricted by the
required specification of the patient argument as a potential controller –as in the case of the direct
reflexive reading. If this explanation is correct, the implication is that whether a language allows
for the reciprocal reading of the middle or not depends on properties that are independent of the
middle itself. Note that the same holds for the resultative reading of the middle, which depends on
the existence of a stative/resultative aspect that is integrated in the middle paradigm.
The status of the passive reading differs from that of the other ‘noncore’ readings in that it
requires some changes of the conditions introduced in section 4. Due to the HIGHEST ARGUMENT—
FIRST PARTICIPANT CONDITION (see (30)) and THE GRAMMATICAL STATUS OF S-CONTROL (see (21)), the
agent cannot be interpreted as a participant of the event if the subject is not the s-controller.39
Consequently, the passive reading can only be integrated into the middle readings if at least one
of these conditions is abolished.
However, the occurrence of both the anticausative reading and the modal reading has been
motivated by the conflict that arises if the subject of the middle stem cannot be interpreted as an
s-controller. The analysis therefore predicts that the passive reading on the one hand and the
anticausative and the modal reading on the other should exclude each other.
Actually, there is evidence for the incompatibility of the readings. With respect to languages
that integrate the passive reading, two cases have to be distinguished. First, there is evidence from
languages like Ancient Greek, Russian and Swedish that the integration of the passive reading
leads to changes concerning the inventory of the other middle readings of a language. Second, if
languages integrate the passive reading without any major changes of the middle system like
Modern Greek and Romance languages, the passive reading is subject to aspectual restrictions as
well as to restrictions concerning the sortal properties of the subject and the specificity of the
implicit agent. In Kaufmann (2004) I argue that the more radical changes of the first case result
from the fact that the conflict between the HIGHEST ARGUMENT—FIRST PARTICIPANT CONDITION and THE
GRAMMATICAL STATUS OF S-CONTROL is solved by giving up the latter condition so that s-control is no
longer related to the highest argument position. Thus, the canonical controller can be interpreted
as the s-controller even is s/he is implicit (= passive reading).
39
Note that this is not the case in the passive voice, where the agent argument is projected to argument structure and thus
is interpreted as the s-controller itself.
1710
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
The changes that lead to the integration of a (restricted) passive reading are less radical. In this
case, the HIGHEST ARGUMENT – FIRST PARTICIPANT CONDITION is replaced by a weaker condition which
says that reference to a specific situation is only possible if the first participant is realized as the
highest argument of the verb. Since the highest argument is no longer necessarily interpreted as
the first participant because of the modified condition, an implicit agent can be interpreted as
being part of the situation, as is necessary for the passive reading. However, since no reference to
a specific situation is possible, the agent is also unspecific in most of the cases. Under this
assumption, the highest argument still is the s-controller of specific situations. For this reason, the
passive reading is very marked if the subject is human, since an interpretation as an s-controller is
preferred.40
While the restricted passive reading seems to be compatible with other readings of the middle,
there is evidence that in languages that have developed an unrestricted passive reading
(presumably by giving up THE GRAMMATICAL STATUS OF S-CONTROL), the middle system undergoes a
change. Which changes occur differs from language to language.41 Since the passive reading
occurs after the readings discussed in section 4, it is reasonable to assume that the changes of the
system are related to the development of the passive reading.
In the following, I will briefly discuss three languages with different types of changes, namely
Swedish, Russian and Ancient Greek.
According to Ureland (1974), the reflexive clitic =s was a productive middle marker in
Swedish until the 14th century. Today, the =s is a marker of the passive reading, the reciprocal
reading and of the dispositional (modal) reading of verbs with implicit objects. None of the latter
readings is an inherent middle reading.42
(52)
Readings of =s verbs in Swedish
a.
Bankerna stäng=s klockan 3
banks
close-REFL o’clock 3
‘The banks are closed at 3.’
b.
Han vårda=s på Dander dys djukhus
she treat-REFL by Dander in the hospital
‘In the hospital she is treated by Dander.’
c.
De träffa=s
‘They met.’
they met-REFL
d.
Hunden bit=s
‘The dog bites.’
e.
Nässlorna bränn=s ‘The nettle stings.’
passive reading
reciprocal reading
objectless verbs (dispositional)
Although I have no information about the development of the readings of Swedish =s verbs, the
data suggest that after the integration of the passive reading, the genuine middle readings
disappeared and only readings that do not belong to the middle readings continued to be encoded
by =s verbs. Interestingly, in Modern Swedish the reflexive pronoun sig is used as a marker for the
core readings of the middle (direct reflexive and anticausative reading). According to Holmes and
40
Languages with the restricted passive reading differ with respect to the exact range of the restrictions. Modern Greek,
for example, allows human subjects in the passive reading; Spanish allows the referential use of the passive reading if the
subject is nontopical. As shown in Kaufmann (2004), the analysis only briefly sketched here can be extended to account
for these language specific differences.
41
For a discussion of possible developments of middle systems see Kaufmann (2004).
42
Note that the reciprocal reading can be considered a middle reading only if the direct reflexive reading is also part of
the system.
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
1711
Hinchliffe (1994), the anticausative reading is restricted to verbs with an agentive subject. Note
that due to the agentivity of the theme argument, event reduction is not necessary to derive this
reading. Instead, it can be derived in the same way as the direct reflexive reading.43 Historically,
the agentive anticausative reading develops after the direct reflexive reading but before the
nonagentive anticausative reading (Reichenkron, 1933; Selig, 1998). The Swedish sig verbs thus
still seem to be at the beginning of the development of a middle system.
(53)
Readings of sig verbs in Swedish
a.
Han tvättar sig
‘He washed’
He washed REFL
b.
Han försvarade sig
‘He defended himself.’
c.
gömma
– gömma sig
‘to hide (tr.)’ – ‘to hide (intr.)’
hejda
– hejda sig
‘to stop (tr.)’ – ‘to stop (intr.)’
direct reflexive reading
anticausative reading
In Modern Russian, where the passive is a productive reading of verbs marked by the reflexive
clitic =sja in the imperfective aspect, the function of =sja has been extended. The middle readings
remained, but since a number of other readings exist beside them, the reflexive clitic =sja seems
to be a marker for all kinds of detransitivations rather than a middle marker (see Babby, 1975,
1998; Babby and Brecht, 1975). Both Swedish and Russian are examples of languages in which
the middle system declined after the development of the passive reading. An explanation for this
is that with the integration of the passive reading, the conditions that determine the interpretation
of the available readings have to be reinterpreted in one way or other.
Not all languages that integrated the unrestricted passive reading have changed their middle
system as radically as Swedish and Russian. A language which has integrated the passive reading
but preserved the middle system as a whole is Greek.
The passive reading is not one of the original readings of the middle in Homerian Greek (8th
and 7th century B.C.; Wistrand, 1943; Jankuhn, 1969), but developed later in the imperfective
aspect when the perfective thē-passive entered the paradigm as a third voice. During the classic
(Attic) period (5th and 4th century B.C.), both the (thē-)passive (perfective aspect) and the passive
reading of the middle (imperfective aspect) were established, although they were rarely used
(Rijksbaron, 1984). In the Koine (330 B.C.- 330), however, the use of the passive reading
increased, and different from the classical period, even the realization of the agent as a PP was
possible. Interestingly, many grammarians point out that the use of the middle was very
unsystematic during the Koine and that major changes took place with respect to the use of active
and middle forms (Hatzidakis, 1892/1977; Jannaris, 1897/1968). Based on data presented in
Hatzidakis (1892/1977), it is claimed in Kaufmann (2004) that the integration of the passive
reading of the middle led to changes especially with respect to the anticausative reading of the
middle: many anticausative middle verbs were replaced by active forms.
These changes can be accounted for if one assumes that during the Koine, the HIGHEST
ARGUMENT—FIRST PARTICIPANT CONDITION (see (21)) is not valid anymore. As a consequence, event
reduction is no longer licensed so that the anticausative reading cannot be derived. The
unrestricted passive reading can only be derived, however, if THE GRAMMATICAL STATUS OF
43
Interestingly, even the media tantum marked by sig are agentive, while the media tantum marked by =s belong to the
usual classes (Ureland, 1974).
1712
I. Kaufmann / Lingua 117 (2007) 1677–1714
S-CONTROL (see (30)) is also abolished. In this case, the implicit agent can be interpreted as the
s-controller; s-control is no longer determined by u-Structure but by the control properties
determined by the SF. The middle system that has developed during the classical period and in the
Koine has been conserved in the katharévousa, the official Greek language until 1976 (e.g.,
Mackridge, 1985; Roland, 1994; Smirniotopoulos, 1992). In Modern Greek (dimotiki), however,
the passive reading is much more restricted than in the previous stages of the language. In Modern
Greek, the restrictions on the passive reading are similar to that in Spanish, which can be described
as retaining THE GRAMMATICAL STATUS OF S-CONTROL but restricting the HIGHEST ARGUMENT—FIRST
PARTICIPANT CONDITION to verbs that refer to specific situations as discussed above. As a consequence,
the passive reading is only possible if the verb encodes generic and unspecific situations.
The decline of the passive reading in Modern Greek and the loss of the middle systems in
Russian and Swedish raise the question why middle systems that integrate the unrestricted passive
reading are instable. According to the analysis presented here, the reason is that the passive can only
be integrated at the cost of one of the core readings, namely the anticausative reading. Together with
the direct reflexive reading this reading reflects the conceptual motivation of the middle. If it is lost,
the middle no longer fulfils the general function to mark the one-participant variant of verbal
concepts that may involve either one or two participants. Consequently, a sound middle system that
integrates the unrestricted passive reading is not to be expected.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, I have argued that the general function of middle voice is to encode that the
control properties of the arguments of a verb are noncanonical. What all the observed differential
readings have in common is that their agent argument is not represented in u-Structure and
therefore cannot be interpreted as the s-controller. Which reading arises depends on the lexically
specified control properties of the arguments, the event structure of the verb, and the aspectual
information. Furthermore, the sortal properties of the NPs that saturate the arguments are
relevant: inanimate subjects can never be s-controllers, even if the argument is specified as a
potential controller. Cross-linguistic differences follow from language specific differences with
respect to the devices that are necessary for the individual readings.
Acknowledgements
The research presented in this paper is taken from my ‘Habilitationsschrift’ (Kaufmann,
2004), which was funded by a grant of the German Science Foundation. I would like to thank
everybody who helped me through discussion and comments at the various stages of the
development of the ideas presented here. Furthermore, I thank Miriam Butt and the anonymous
reviewers for valuable comments.
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