GLOSS and Department of Linguistics Colloquium
April 10, 245 Straub 3:00-5:00
Thomas E. Payne
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Taeho Jang
SIL International
Causative and Passive Isomorphism -- a sensible functional anomaly
In many languages a single morphosyntactic construction exists that expresses both causative and passive functions. Such "causative/passive isomorphism" appears anomalous from the point of view of much work in linguistic typology in that a causative is often considered a "valence increasing" construction, while passive is a "valence decreasing" construction. Nevertheless causative/passive isomorphism is fairly common and can prove stable over multiple generations of language change. In this paper we show how an analytic causative construction can become a morphological permissive causative, and finally take on the functions of canonical passive constructions. This path is motivated by well-documented processes of metaphorical extension, reanalysis and grammaticalization. We illustrate this development with data from Xibe (Sibe), a
Tungusic language spoken in Northwestern China