Cover not available
Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 40:4 (2016) ► pp.894–954

Agent-defocusing constructions from nominalized VPs

A cross-linguistic type?

| University of Insubria, Como (Italy)
Nominalized verb phrases have been identified as a possible source of passive and impersonal constructions by Langacker & Munro (1975), Langacker (1976), and Givón (1981), with exemplification drawn almost exclusively from Uto-Aztecan languages, but have received relatively less attention than other sources (reflexive markers, generalized subject constructions, 3rd person plural constructions, inactive auxiliaries + resultative participles, etc.). The aim of this article is to review the available evidence concerning passive and impersonal constructions derived from nominalized VPs, with a view to establishing whether they are cross-linguistically recurrent and robust as a type. Such a review reveals that there are overall a few instances of passive/impersonal constructions that are likely to derive from nominalized VPs. In many of the other cases in which a nominalized VP has been hypothesized to be the source of a given passive or impersonal construction there is no conclusive evidence for reconstructing such a source, and in some cases even an alternative source can be posited. Even in this unfavourable situation, however, a tentative scenario of how nominalized VPs might evolve into passive and impersonal constructions may be sketched, in order to account for the few cases in which such a development is likely to have taken place. The onset stage of this development, in particular, capitalizes on the possibility offered by nominalized VPs to manipulate the argument structure of the verb by keeping the initiator of the event off the stage.
Keywords: nominalization, agent defocusing, inverse constructions, impersonal constructions, passive constructions
Published online: 2 February 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.40.4.05san
References (100)
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2011. Word-class changing derivation in typological perspective. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M.W. Dixon (eds.), Language at large. Essays on syntax and semantics, 221–289. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Armendáriz, Rolando Gpe. Félix. 2005. A grammar of River Warihío. PhD Dissertation, Houston, Rice University.Google Scholar
van den Berg, René. 2008. Integration and interdependence in Oceanic research: An SIL perspective. Paper presented at the Conference on Directions in Oceanic Research , Newcastle, Australia, December 9-11.
van den Berg, René & Brenda H. Boerger. 2011. A Proto-Oceanic passive? Evidence from Bola and Natügu. Oceanic Linguistics 50(1): 221–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Braithwaite, Ben. 2003. Syntactic approaches to possessive constructions in Nuuchahnulth. In J.C. Brown & Michele Kalmar (eds.), Papers for the 38th International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, 7–22. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Working Papers in Linguistics.Google Scholar
Bugaeva, Anna 2011. A diachronic study of the impersonal passive in Ainu. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal Constructions. A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, 517–546. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burgess, Don. 1984. Western Tarahumara. In Ronald W. Langacker (ed.), Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar, Vol. 4: Southern Uto-Aztecan Grammatical Sketches, 1–150. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Caballero, Gabriela. 2008. Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) Phonology and Morphology. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
. 2014. Uto-Aztecan. In Rochelle Lieber & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of derivational morphology, 724–742. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Casad, Eugene H. 1984. Cora. In Ronald W. Langacker (ed.), Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar, Vol. 4: Southern Uto-Aztecan Grammatical Sketches, 151–459. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Chapman, Shirley & Desmond C. Derbyshire. 1991. Paumarí. In Desmond C. Derbyshire & Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), Handbook of Amazonian Languages, Vol. 31, 161–352. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Chen, Cheng-Fu. 2005. Object voice and nominalization in Rukai. UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 121: 35–47.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard & Sandra A. Thompson. 2007. Lexical nominalization. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, 334–381. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coupe, Alexander. 2007. A grammar of Mongsen Ao. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crevels, Mily. 2011. Who did what to whom in Magdalena (Itonama). International Journal of American Linguistics 77 (4): 577–594. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 2011. Finite structures from clausal nominalization in Tibeto-Burman. In Foong >Ha Yap, Karen >Grunow-Hårsta & Janick >Wrona (eds.), Nominalization in Asian Languages: Diachronic and Typological Perspectives, 343–360. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dienst, Stefan. 2014. A grammar of Kulina. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Robert M.W. 1999. The Amazonian languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2004. The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, Robert M.W. & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. 1997. A typology of argument-determined constructions. In Joan Bybee, John Haiman & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Essays on Language Function and Language Type. Dedicated to T. Givón, 71–113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ehrich, Veronika & Irene Rapp. 2000. Sortale Bedeutung und Argumentstruktur: ung-Nominalisierungen im Deutschen. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 19 (2): 245–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Escalante, Fernando. 1990. Setting the record straight on Yaqui passives. International Journal of American Linguistics 56 (2): 289–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 1989. A grammar of Pero. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.Google Scholar
Giacalone Ramat, Anna & Andrea Sansò. 2007. The spread and decline of indefinite man-constructions in European languages. An areal perspective. In Paolo Ramat & Elisa Roma (eds.), Europe and the Mediterranean as Linguistic Areas. Convergences from a Historical and Typological Perspective, 95–131. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. From passive to impersonal. A case study from Italian and its implications. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective, 189–228. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. Venire (‘come’) as a passive auxiliary in Italian. In Maud Devos & Jenneke van der Wal (eds.), COME and GO off the beaten grammaticalization path, 21–44. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gildea, Spike. 1994. Semantic and pragmatic inverse: ‘Inverse alignment’ and ‘inverse voice’ in Carib of Surinam. In Talmy Givón (ed.), Voice and inversion, 187–230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. On reconstructing grammar. Comparative Cariban morphosyntax. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1981. Typology and functional domains. Studies in Language 5(2): 163–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1988. Tale of two passives in Ute. In Masayoshi Shibatani (ed.), Passive and voice, 417–440. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1994a. The pragmatics of de-transitive voice: Functional and typological aspects of inversion. In Talmy Givón (ed.), Voice and Inversion, 3–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Grammatical relations in passive clauses: A diachronic perspective. In Werner Abraham & Larisa Leisiö (eds.), Passivization and Typology. Form and Function, 337–350. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Ute Reference Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy & Boniface Kawasha. 2006. Indiscrete grammatical relations. The Lunda passive. In Tasaku Tsunoda & Taro Kageyama (eds.), Voice and grammatical relations. In Honor of Masayoshi Shibatani, 15–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guerrero Valenzuela, Lilián Graciela. 2004. The syntax-semantic interface in Yaqui complex sentences: A Role and Reference Grammar analysis. Buffalo, NY: SUNY, Buffalo PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1990. The grammaticization of passive morphology. Studies in Language 14(1): 25–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugen, Jason D. 2008. Denominal verbs in Uto-Aztecan. International Journal of American Linguistics 74(4): 439–470. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heath, Jeffrey. 1977. Review of Non-Distinct Arguments in Uto-Aztecan by Ronald W. Langacker. Language 53(2): 457–461.Google Scholar
. 1998. Hermit crabs: Formal renewal of morphology by phonologically mediated affix substitution. Language 741: 728–750. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hengeveld, Kees. 1992. Non-verbal predication: Theory, typology, diachrony. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Jane H. 2005. A grammar of Cupeño. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horie, Kaoru. 2008. The grammaticalization of nominalizers in Japanese and Korean: A contrastive study. In María José López-Couso & Elena Seoane (eds.), Rethinking Grammaticalization: New perspectives, 169–187. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume. 2014. Denominal affixes as sources of antipassive markers in Japhug Rgyalrong. Lingua 1381: 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume & Anton Antonov. 2014. Direct/inverse systems. Language and Linguistics Compass 8/71: 301–318. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, Eun-Sook. 2004. The Morphological Status of -ʔat in Nuu-chah-nulth. Berkeley Linguistics Society 30(2): 61–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1993. Nominalizations. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin & John Whitman. 2011. Afterword: Nominalizations in syntactic theory. Lingua 121(7): 1297–1313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1976. Non-Distinct Arguments in Uto-Aztecan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. & Pamela Munro. 1975. Passives and their meaning. Language 51(4): 789–830. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langdon, Margaret. 1992. Yuman Plurals: From Derivation to Inflection to Noun Agreement. International Journal of American Linguistics 58(4): 405–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LaPolla, Randy J. 2008. Nominalization in Rawang. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 31(2): 45–65.Google Scholar
Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross & Terry Crowley. 2002. The Oceanic languages. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Malchukov, Andrej. 2006. Constraining nominalization: Function/form competition. Linguistics 44(5): 973–1009. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malchukov, Andrej & Anna Siewierska. 2011. Introduction. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective, 1–15. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matisoff, James A. 1972. Lahu nominalization, relativization, and genetivization. In John P. Kimball (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 11, 237–257. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Meira, Sérgio & Sebastian Drude. 2013. Sobre a origem histórica dos “prefixos relacionais” das línguas Tupí-Guaraní. Cadernos de Etnolingüística 5(1). [URL]Google Scholar
Meira, Sérgio, Spike Gildea & Berend J. Hoff. 2010. On the origin of Ablaut in the Cariban Family. International Journal of American Linguistics 76(4): 477–515. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Munro, Pamela. 1974. Topics in Mojave syntax. San Diego, CA: University of California at San Diego PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Nakayama, Toshihide. 1997. Functions of the Nootka (Nuu-chah-nulth) “Passive” Suffix. International Journal of American Linguistics 63(3): 412–431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Noonan, Michael. 1992. A grammar of Lango. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Nominalization in Bodic languages. In María José López-Couso & Elena Seoane (eds.), Rethinking Grammaticalization: New perspectives, 219–237. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olawsky, Knut J. 2006. A grammar of Urarina. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pardeshi, Prashant. 2007. No smoke without fire: Invisible agent constructions in South Asian languages. Kobe Papers in Linguistics 51: 175–191.Google Scholar
Payne, Doris. 1994. The Tupí-Guaraní inverse. In Barbara Fox & Paul J. Hopper (eds.), Voice. Form and Function, 313–340. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Post, Mark W. 2011. Nominalization-based constructions in Tibeto-Burman: Typology and evolution. Paper presented at the 9th Biennial Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology , University of Hong Kong, July 22, 2011.
Ravinski, Christine. 2005. Grammatical possession in Nuu-chah-nulth. Vancouver: University of British Columbia MA thesis.Google Scholar
Refsing, Kirsten. 1986. The Ainu language: The morphology and syntax of the Shizunai Dialect. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.Google Scholar
Riehl, Claudia Maria. 2001. Zur Grammatikalisierung der deutschen werden-Periphrasen (vom Germanischen zum Frühneuhochdeutschen). In Birgit Igla & Th. Stolz (eds.), “Was ich noch sagen wollte…” – A multilingual Festschrift for Norbert Boretzky on occasion of his 65th birthday, 469–487. Berlin: Akademie.Google Scholar
Rose, Françoise. 2009. A hierarchical indexation system: The example of Emerillon (Teko). In Patience Epps & Alexander Arkhipov (eds.), New challenges in typology. Transcending the borders and refining the distinctions, 63–83. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ross, Malcolm. 2002. The history and transitivity of western Austronesian voice and voice-marking. In Fay Wouk & Malcolm Ross (eds.), The history and typology of Western Austronesian voice systems, 17–62. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
. 2009. Proto-Austronesian verbal morphology: A reappraisal. In Alexander Adelaar & Andrew Pawley (eds.), Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history: A Festschrift for Robert Blust, 295–326. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Sansò, Andrea. 2003. Degrees of event elaboration. Passive constructions in Italian and Spanish. Milan: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
. 2015. Where do antipassives come from? A study in diachronic typology. Paper presented at the 22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics . Naples (Italy), July 2015.
Sansò, Andrea & Anna Giacalone Ramat. 2016. Deictic motion verbs as passive auxiliaries. The case of Italian andare ‘go’ (and venire ‘come’). Transactions of the Philological Society 114(1): 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1930. Southern Paiute, A Shoshonean Language. Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 651: 1–296.
Schneider, Cynthia. 2011. Na passive and na- associative in Abma: Shared properties; Shared origin? Oceanic Linguistics 50(2): 380–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna. 2008. Introduction: Impersonalization from a subject-centered vs. agent-centered perspective. Transactions of the Philological Society (Special issue: Impersonal Constructions in Grammatical Theory) 106(2): 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. From 3pl to passive: Incipient, emergent and established passives. Diachronica 27(3): 73–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Overlap and complementarity in reference impersonals. Man-constructions vs. third person plural-impersonals in the languages of Europe. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective, 57–89. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. Passive Constructions. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology. ([URL]).Google Scholar
Sohn, Ho-Min. 2001. The Korean language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sridhar, Shikaripur R. 1990. Kannada. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Starosta, Stanley, Andrew K. Pawley & Lawrence A. Reid. 1982. The evolution of focus in Austronesian. In Amran Halim, Lois Carrington & Stephen A. Wurm (eds.), Papers from the Third International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Vol. 2: Tracking the Travellers, 145–170. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
. 2009[1982]. The evolution of focus in Austronesian. [Unabridged version of Starosta, et al. 1982.] In Elizabeth Zeitoun (ed.), Formosan Linguistics: Stanley Starosta’s Contributions, Vol. 21, 329–481. Taipei: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Sung, Li-May. 2011. Clausal nominalization in Budai Rukai. In Foong Ha Yap, Karen Grunow-Hårsta & Janick Wrona (eds.), Nominalization in Asian languages: Diachronic and typological perspectives, 523–559. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toosarvandani, Maziar. 2010. Patterns of nominalization in Numic. International Journal of American Linguistics 76(1): 71–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vajda, Edward, Andrey Nefedov & Andrej Malchukov. 2011. Impersonal constructions in Ket. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective, 439–458. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van den Berg, René (see Berg).
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2008. Critical discourse analysis and nominalization: problem or pseudo-problem? Discourse and Society 19(6): 821–828. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Velázquez-Castillo, Maura. 2008. Voice and transitivity in Guaraní. In Mark Donohue & Søren Wichmann (eds.), The typology of semantic alignment, 380–395. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vogel, Petra Maria. 2006. Das unpersönliche Passiv. Eine funktionale Untersuchung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Deutschen und seiner historischen Entwicklung. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vries, Lourens de. 1995. Demonstratives, referent identification and topicality in Wambon and some other Papuan languages. Journal of Pragmatics 241: 513–533. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weber, David John. 1989. A grammar of Huallaga (Huánuco) Quechua. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wiemer, Bjorn. 2004. The evolution of passives as grammatical constructions in Northern Slavic and Baltic languages. In Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Bjorn Wiemer (eds.), What makes grammaticalization? A look from its fringes and components, 271–331. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Xu, Huiling & Stephen Matthews. 2011. On the polyfunctionality and grammaticalization of the morpheme kai in the Chaoxhou dialect. In Foong Ha Yap, Karen Grunow-Hårsta & Janick Wrona et al. (eds.), Nominalization in Asian Languages: Diachronic and Typological Perspectives, 109–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yap, Foong Ha & Stephen Matthews. 2008. The development of nominalizers in East Asian and Tibeto-Burman languages. In María José López-Couso & Elena Seoane (eds.), Rethinking Grammaticalization: New perspectives, 309–341. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yap, Foong Ya, Fanny Pik-ling Choi & Kam-siu Cheung. 2010. Delexicalizing di: How a Chinese noun has evolved into an attitudinal nominalizer. In An Van linden, Jean-Christophe Verstraete & Kristin Davidse (eds.), Formal Evidence in Grammaticalization Research, 63–92. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yap, Foong Ha, Karen Grunow-Hårsta & Janick Wrona. 2011. Introduction: Nominalization strategies in Asian languages. In F. Yap, et al. (eds.), Nominalization in Asian languages: Diachronic and typological perspectives, 1–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zigmond, Maurice L., Curtis G. Booth & Pamela Munro. 1990. Kawaiisu: A grammar and dictonary with texts. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Inglese, Guglielmo
2023. The rise of middle voice systems. Diachronica 40:2 ► pp. 195 ff. DOI logo
Auderset, Sandra
2021. Chapter 12. The antipassive and its relationship to person markers. In Antipassive [Typological Studies in Language, 130], ► pp. 385 ff. DOI logo
Meluzzi, Chiara, Erica Pinelli, Elena Valvason & Chiara Zanchi
2021. Responsibility attribution in gender-based domestic violence: A study bridging corpus-assisted discourse analysis and readers' perception. Journal of Pragmatics 185 ► pp. 73 ff. DOI logo
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee
2019. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, DOI logo
Sansò, Andrea
2017. Where do antipassive constructions come from?. Diachronica 34:2 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.