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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 34:4 (2017) ► pp.437–469
Articles / Aufsätze

From middle to passive

A diachronic analysis of Korean -eci constructions

| Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
| Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen | Hong Kong Polytechnic University

This paper examines the relationship between middle and passive voice constructions in Korean, in particular how they have come to share the same grammatical marker -eci. Based on diachronic data from the UNICONC (Korean historical) database, spanning Old, Middle and Modern Korean (15th to 20th century), our analysis reveals that -eci was initially used as a middle voice marker for spontaneous and inchoative events, with change-of-state as their common feature, then extended to transitive contexts, giving rise to passive voice usage. More recently, -eci has developed into a marker of facilitative middle constructions as well. These semantic extensions involve shifts in aspectual focus from change-of-state to resultative-state, and further to potential aspect and mood. This analysis contributes to our understanding of the diachrony of voice markers beyond the causative-to-passive pathway commonly seen in Northeast Asia to include the middle-to-passive pathway, with typological implications.

Keywords: middle voice, passive voice, Korean -eci , valence-change phenomena, diachrony of voice markers
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous studies on different pathways in the development of voice markers
  • 3.Grammaticalization of -eci as a voice marker in Korean
    • 3.1From lexical verb fall to spontaneous middle -eci
    • 3.2Further extensions within the middle domain: Spontaneous > inchoative > facilitative
      • 3.2.1From spontaneous middle to inchoative middle
      • 3.2.2Role of subjectification in the emergence of facilitative middle -eci constructions
    • 3.3From middles to passives: A secondary grammaticalization pathway for -eci
    • 3.4Layers of grammatical evolution of -eci
    • 3.5Interim summary
  • 4.Usage frequencies of -eci: A diachronic analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 9 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.16037.ahn
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