Impersonal configurations and theticity

Impersonal predications are often viewed as structures expressing either agent defocusing, or lack of canonical subject properties. The study of one type of prototypical impersonal predication, meteorological predicates, in various Afroasiatic branches suggests that the subject or agent may not be centrally associated to the notion of impersonal. Rather, defocussing or backgrounding can concern either the entity or the event, resulting not only in subjectless structures and non-canonical subjects, but also in verbless structures and non-canonical predicates. What unifies those structures, rather than lack of canonical subjecthood or agent defocusing, is theticity, which may also be at play in other impersonal types than meteorological predicates. Keywords: impersonal; Afroasiatic; theticity; meteorological predications; weather verbs

Published online: 20 July 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124.11met