Microsoft PowerPoint - Week15_Givon_ch. 8 Voice.ppt

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1 Formal Approach to Passive Voice Concerns: Why is the passive structure grammatical? How to explain the structure of passive voice? Explanations: Case filter Theta marking NP-movement Trigger: the passive morphology Questions Can structure explain structure? No explanation of the passive morphology itself: Why BE + PP

2 Functional Approach to Passive Voice Concerns: Why is active/passive distinguished? When would passive be used? What are the functional correlates? Explanation: form function Pragmatic motivation Semantic motivation Questions Are there other constructions similar in detransitivization? Why only Direct Object gets promoted?

3 Functional Approach to Passive Voice Pragmatic functions involve: Perspective of the event: who s in control? Topicality of participants: who is important? Semantic functions involve: De-transitivization: Demotion of Agent Promotion of Non-Agent Verb stativization

4 Three Types of Voice Active voice Passive voice Antipassive voice Ex. He ate. He drinks.

5 Functional Dimensions of Voice The semantics of transitive event: Agent: a volitional, controlling, actively-initiating agent. Patient: non-volitional, inactive non-controlling patient who registers the event s changes-of-state, and thus is it s salient effect. Verb: an event that is compact (non-durative), bounded (non-lingering), sequential (non-perfect) and realis (non-hypothetical).

6 The Pragmatics of Voice Perspective and topicality Who is in control? Who is important? Who are you talking about?

7 Three main functional dimensions of de-transitive voice: Agent demotion Promotion of a non-agent Verb stativization

8 Agent Demotionmotivations The agent may be: Unknown ex: He was killed in the Boer war Predictable ex: The soldiers invaded the village Soon the entire place was burned down. Given in the subsequent discourse ex: There was no telling what might happened if he had not been interrupted. The dog had been whimpering and whining

9 Agent Demotion Predictable on general grounds ex: The plane was brought down safely. Universal and thus left unspecified ex: as everybody knew, dogs were psychic Now, it was known that these were actually fifth-dimensional objects Deliberately suppressed to avoid culpability ex: Finally she said: A long, long time ago, before I was born He got into a fight then, when he was young, and a man was killed. But he was a wild boy then, and drunk. Now he is and old man. He doesn t drink now. Not for years

10 Demotion of agent The agent may be predictable as the author of text ex: Enough has been said here of a subject which will be treated more fully in a subsequent chapter The agent may simply be unimportant Impersonal subject ex: They found her nude body on the beach last night

11 Impersonal-subject Constructions The agent is unimportant Non-specific Not individuated ex: They found her nude body on the beach last night.

12 Promotion of Non-agent Promotional de-transitive constructions: Be-passive: John was killed in an accident. Get-passive: Mary got elected on her second try. Middle voice: The window suddenly broke. Potential middle: This book is eminently readable.

13 Promotion of Non-agent Non-promotional de-transitive constructions: They found him lying on the beach half dead. One doesn t chew tobacco in polite company. You can find cheap housing there.

14 Verb Stativization An event that is framed in the active voice is typically agent-initiated, sharply-bounded, fastchanging process. In the passive voice, the same event can be re-framed as a resulting state. Ex: a) The use of the auxiliary verb be as the main verb in the passive construction. b) The use of a less-finite - adjectival, perfect, participial- verb-form.

15 Manipulation verbs Tend to reject semantically-stative verbs in their complements, and accept only active verbs. Active She told him to go to sleep. Adjectival-stative * She told him to be asleep. Adjectival-stative * She told him to be tall. Progressive-stative * She told him to be going to sleep.

16 Manipulative verbs reject passivevoice complements She made John chop the wood. *She made the wood be chopped (by John). They asked her to leave her husband. *They asked her husband to be left (by her). John, go find Mary! *Mary, go be found (by John)!

17 The Frequency-distribution of Voice The active (main, declarative, affirmative) clause is the basic, simple, unmarked clausetype.

18 The Frequency-distribution of Voice clause-type. active passive Text-type N % N % academic fiction news sports

Microsoft PowerPoint - Week14_Givon_ch7 verbal comlplements.ppt

Microsoft PowerPoint - Week14_Givon_ch7 verbal comlplements.ppt CH7 Verbal Complement 交大外文劉美君老師 1 Verbal Complementscombining two events Main Event + Secondary Event Main CL + Subordinate CL Finite VP (Tensed V) -Non-finite VP (To-V, V-ing) -that CL 2 Verb and Complement