Passives in South Asian Languages
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| Title | Passives in South Asian Languages |
| Authors | |
| Abstract | Haspelmath (2010) debates whether universal (descriptive) categories of the types that generativists (cf. Newmeyer, 2007) envisage are real and needed for cross-linguistic studies. Instead every language has its own unique set of categories. We raise doubt on this “categorial particularism” position by drawing on underlying similarities of passive constructions of three South Asian languages - Oriya (Indo-Aryan), Malayalam (Dravidian) and Kharia (Austro-Asiatic). Unlike English-type passives, they retain subject properties for their logical subjects and object properties for their logical objects, suggesting commonalities that a “categorial particularism” approach would not allow us to posit. Our further contention is that like English passives, they too satisfy Shibatani’s (1985) minimal condition for passives – the underscoring or the optionality of agents. Passive voice must therefore be a universal found in all languages primarily resulting in the optionality of agents. We also show how adopting this approach helps us re-analyse Meitei and Ao (Tibeto-Burman) as languages involving passives. ----- Haspelmath (2010) se v svoji razpravi sprašuje, ali so univerzalne kategorije, ki jih obravnavajo generativisti (prim. Newmeyer, 2007), resnične in potrebne za medjezikovne raziskave. Namesto tega naj bi imel vsak jezik svoje lastne kategorije. Članek se ne strinja s konceptom “specifičnih kategorij”, kar prikaže na primeru podobnih pasivnih konstukcij v treh jezikih Južne Azije: v indoarijskem jeziku orija, dravidskem jeziku malajalam in avstroazijskem jeziku karija. Z razliko od pasivov, ki so značilni za angleščino, pasivi v teh jezikih ohranjajo značilnosti osebka za logične osebke in značilnosti predmeta za logične predmete. V okviru koncepta “specifičnih kategorij” to ne bi smelo biti mogoče. Sledi utemeljitev, da enako kot v angleščini tudi tu omenjene oblike pasiva ustrezajo mininalnim pogojem za pasiv, kot jih določa Shibatani (1985), t.j. poudarek na neobveznem vršilcu dejanja. Pasiv torej mora biti univerzalna značilnost vseh jezikov, ki se sprva kaže skozi neobvezni vršilec dejanja. Članek nazadnje pokaže, kako lahko s tem pristopom ponovno analiziramo tibetansko-burmanska jezika Meitei in Ao, kot jezika v pasivom. |
| Publisher | Faculty of Arts |
| Date | 2013-07-23 |
| Source | Acta Linguistica Asiatica Vol 3, No 1 (2013) |
| Rights | Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) |