Demoting the agent : passive, middle, and other voice phenomena / / edited by Benjamin Lyngfelt, Torgrim Solstad

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910821440003321
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Amsterdam ; ; Philadelphia, : J Benjamins, 2006
• ISBN: 1-282-15519-9; 9786612155192; 90-272-9307-4
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: x, 333 p
• Collana: Linguistik aktuell, , 0166-0829 ; ; v. 96
• Altri autori (Persone): SolstadTorgrim; LyngfeltBenjamin
• Disciplina: 415
• Soggetti: Grammar, Comparative and general - Voice; Grammar, Comparative and general - Syntax
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Demoting the Agent -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- List of contributors -- Preface -- Perspectives on demotion -- 1. Background -- 2. Between active and passive -- 3. S-verbs and reflexives in Swedish -- 4. A note on terminology -- 5. Passive and information structure -- 6. On the semantics of voice -- 7. Semantics and Pragmatics -- References -- Semantic and syntactic patterns in Swedish passives -- 1. S-passive and bli-passive -- 2. Conditions of use -- 2.1. Types of events vs. specific events -- 2.2. Aktionsart -- 3. Frequencies of the two passives -- 4. The nature of the subject -- 5. Alternation between s-passive and bli-passive -- 6. What happens to the demoted agent? -- 6.1. Av-phrases -- 6.2. Impersonal passives -- 6.3. Presentational constructions -- 7. Concluding remarks -- References -- Corpora -- The Eastern Khanty locative-agent constructions -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The basics of the Eastern Khanty clause structure -- 3. Information structure -- 4. Non-canonical constructions -- 4.1. Structural properties of the non-canonical constructions -- 4.2. Eastern Khanty non-canonical constructions in the narrative -- 5. Conclusions on Eastern Khanty non-canonical constructions -- Abbreviations -- References -- Agent back-; grounding as a functional domain -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1. Agent demotion and passive -- 1.2. Data -- 2. Be-passive -- 3. Anonymous-agent reflexive -- 3.1. Constraints on the agent -- 3.2. Constraints on the patient -- 4. Resultant state vs. agent anonymity -- 5. Networks of typologically related patterns -- 6. Conclusions -- Sources of data -- References -- Invisible arguments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Impersonals in Estonian and Finnish -- 3. The `zero person' construction in Finnish and Estonian -- 4. Probing for the implicit argument -- 5. Anaphoric reference: Definite pronouns.; 6. Anaphoric reference: Possessives, reflexives, reciprocals -- 6.1. Binding in the impersonal construction -- 6.2. Binding in the zero person construction -- 7. Semantic tests -- 7.1. Adverbials -- 7.2. Control structures -- 7.3. By-phrases -- 8. Bringing the data back home -- 9. Conclusions -- References -- Argument demotion as feature suppression -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Dyadic unaccusatives and two ontological primitives -- 3. Passives and anticausatives in English and Albanian -- 3.1. By-phrases and from-phrases: How different are they? -- 3.2. The issue of purpose clauses and agent-oriented adverbs -- 4. A formal analysis of argument demotion in unaccusative contexts -- 4.1. The structure of causative predications -- 4.2. The structure of activity/process predications -- 4.3. Defining non-active voice -- 4.4. Deriving the unintended causation reading -- 4.5. Deriving the anticausative and the passive -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- A comparative view of the requirement for adverbial modification in middles -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Variation in middles -- 2.1. Some of the syntactic facts -- 2.2. Middles as disposition ascriptions and the role of imperfective aspect -- 2.3. Back to the adverb -- 3. The semantic/pragmatic approach and its problems -- 4. A 'structural' account -- 5. Delimiting the set of appropriate modifiers -- 6. Conclusion and opened questions -- References -- From passive to active -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1. Descriptive background -- 1.2. How to analyze the new construction: Two hypotheses -- 2. Syntactic change in the English auxiliary system -- 3. Grammatical properties of passive vs. active voice -- 3.1. Discourse properties of the passive voice -- 3.2. Syntactic properties of active vs. passive voice clauses -- 4. Cross-linguistic comparison: Passive morphology reanalyzed as active -- 5. The nationwide survey.; 5.1. Reliability of judgments -- 5.2. Morphological case -- 5.3. Testing individual predictions -- 6. Conclusions -- 6.1. Why in Icelandic? -- 6.2. Reanalysis as simplification of the grammar -- References -- The relation between information structure, syntactic structure and passive -- 1. Introduction -- 2. German and Norwegian -- 2.1. Structural contrasts -- 2.2. Passive constructions in German and Norwegian -- 2.3. The data -- 2.4. Information structure -- 3. What the translation pairs reveal -- 3.1. Change of voice -- 3.2. Change of topic -- 3.3. Additional support: Introducing an implicit agent -- 4. Concluding remarks -- References -- Syntax and semantics of the deontic WANT-passive in Italo-Romance -- 1. Introduction: The data -- 1.1. Some general properties of WANT-passives -- 1.2. A cross-linguistic view -- 1.3. Ledgeway's WANT-passive in Romance -- 2. General remarks on the passive -- 2.1. Some proposals on passive constructions -- 2.2. The classification of the Romance WANT-passive -- 3. Passive constructions and the external argument in the MP -- 4. The WANT-passive in the MP -- 4.1. General assumptions -- 4.2. The derivation of the deontic passive with WANT -- 5. WANT: Subcategorization frames and modal shift -- 5.1. Syntactic typology of WANT-constructions -- 5.2. WANT and modality's semantic map (cf. Van Auwera &amp -- Plungian 1998) -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- Agentivity and the ; virtual reflexive construction -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Comparing reflexive patient-subject constructions -- 3. Comparing virtual reflexives and middles -- 4. A review of Fellbaum's (1989) lexical semantic analysis -- 5. An alternative lexical semantic analysis -- 6. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Appendix: Some additional attested examples of virtual reflexives -- Arguments in middles -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Genericity in middles.; 3. On for-PPs in middles -- 4. On German middles -- 5. Towards an analysis of middle formation -- 5.1. Reflexives and event responsibility -- 5.2. Middles and vPs -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- Language index -- Name index -- Subject index -- The series Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today.
• Sommario/riassunto: Passives, middles, and other voice phenomena are issues at the core of modern linguistic research. This volume brings together different perspectives on voice different theoretical viewpoints, different languages, and different kinds of voice phenomena. The eleven articles each make a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion, offering new data, new analyses, and bringing new light to long-standing issues. In combination, they present a multi-faceted and yet coherent picture of the topics at hand.