The lazy man's passive.

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Nachtuil
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The lazy man's passive.

Post by Nachtuil »

I was working away with my case inflected language and realised if I just form a sentence with out a nominative pronoun/noun it seems to work as a passive sentence.
Normal: nominative noun. Verb. Accusative noun.
"Passive": accusative noun. Verb.

Is this type of construction attested in the wilds anywhere?
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MrKrov
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Re: The lazy man's passive.

Post by MrKrov »

Awtuw has you drop the agent to this effect. Word order of the patient doesn't change tho.
(Feldman 1986: 95) wrote:rey æye rokra-kay
3sg.m food cook-perf
‘He has cooked food.’

æye rokra-kay
food cook-perf
‘Someone has cooked food.’
Nachtuil
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Re: The lazy man's passive.

Post by Nachtuil »

MrKrov wrote:Awtuw has you drop the agent to this effect. Word order of the patient doesn't change tho.
(Feldman 1986: 95) wrote:rey æye rokra-kay
3sg.m food cook-perf
‘He has cooked food.’

æye rokra-kay
food cook-perf
‘Someone has cooked food.’
Oh excellent! I am going to run with it then :) It isn't quite the same kind of passive as on that mentions both agent and patient but it is still quite useful.
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Creyeditor
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Re: The lazy man's passive.

Post by Creyeditor »

Nachtuil wrote:I was working away with my case inflected language and realised if I just form a sentence with out a nominative pronoun/noun it seems to work as a passive sentence.
Normal: nominative noun. Verb. Accusative noun.
"Passive": accusative noun. Verb.

Is this type of construction attested in the wilds anywhere?
It is attested, but it is usually called subject ommision, though the semantics are similar to a passive. It even occurs without changing th order of the words, so:
Normal: nominative noun. Verb. Accusative noun.
"Subject ommision": Verb. accusative noun.
I am pretty sure, there are examples in natlangs and they may be mentioned in "Describing Morphosyntax", but I don't know which language it was.
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Nachtuil
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Re: The lazy man's passive.

Post by Nachtuil »

Creyeditor wrote: It is attested, but it is usually called subject ommision, though the semantics are similar to a passive. It even occurs without changing th order of the words, so:
Normal: nominative noun. Verb. Accusative noun.
"Subject ommision": Verb. accusative noun.
I am pretty sure, there are examples in natlangs and they may be mentioned in "Describing Morphosyntax", but I don't know which language it was.
Ah that's really good to know! Thank you. I think I should sure up my understanding of grammatical voice. Hopefully I'll can buy or borrow "describing morphosyntax" at some point.

I changed the word order since in my mind I was thinking of my conlang which has V2 word order :)
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Re: The lazy man's passive.

Post by Hyolobrika »

You could use an inflection that focuses on the inflected noun. So that inflection on the nominative or ergative would be active voiced and if it's on the accusative or absolutive it's passive voiced.
Useful if your language relies on syntax to convey case.
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Re: The lazy man's passive.

Post by clawgrip »

Although not exactly a passive equivalent, it might be worth noting that subject omission is quite common in colloquial English. If you will allow me to quote Predator:

Dutch: What's got Billy so spooked?
Mac: Can't say, Major. Been actin' squirrelly all morning. That damned nose of his... it's weird.
mahagugu
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Re: The lazy man's passive.

Post by mahagugu »

I think it's alright and I do not have a problem if I would come up with something new accidently.
There are thousands of languages and not all can be checked but the very fact that you are human
makes it natural somehow.

However "Mir gehört ... " isn't really "passive" (okay, it is somehow) , but as active as "I own .." .
Although the construction does not look like that.

Hindi has a lot of this construction like in ".... mujhe aata/i hai" and it is just the common
way of saying things.
Yes, they do not use a nominative case and so they are commonly understood as "passive".
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Creyeditor
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Re: The lazy man's passive.

Post by Creyeditor »

mahagugu wrote:I think it's alright and I do not have a problem if I would come up with something new accidently.
There are thousands of languages and not all can be checked but the very fact that you are human
makes it natural somehow.

However "Mir gehört ... " isn't really "passive" (okay, it is somehow) , but as active as "I own .." .
Although the construction does not look like that.
It is not passive and it does not look like a passive. When you reverse the constituent order, you get a normal SVO sentence with nominative and dative cases.

Mir gehört ein Auto
1SG.DAT belong(3SG.PRS) INDEF(NOM) car
I own a car.

Ein Auto gehört mir.
INDEF(NOM) car belong(3SG.PRS) 1SG.DAT
I own a car. (e.g. just one car)
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