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Antipassive: Typology, diachrony, and related constructions
Edited by Katarzyna Janic and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
[Typological Studies in Language 130] 2021
► pp. 213–246

Chapter 7
Unspecified participant

A case of antipassive in Ainu

| Tokyo University of Science | National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics

This paper shows that there are two synchronically distinct i- markers in Ainu, viz. the derivational antipassive i- and inflectional ‘fourth’ person object i- with the functions of first person plural inclusive, second person honorific, and logophoric. The derivational antipassive marker i- ‘person/thing’ can be regarded as an antipassive marker per se based on its syntactic (eliminating a patient/theme/recipient argument), semantic (denoting an unspecified generic participant or lexicalizing it to a single or subset of objects) and discourse (patient-defocusing) properties. Contrary to the accepted view, I adduce the ‘antipassive to 1pl.incl.o’ scenario based on extensive cross-linguistic and Ainu-internal evidence. The antipassive i-, in its turn, originated in the incorporation of a generic noun *i ‘thing/place/time’, which is not unusual in languages without overt expression of the demoted O participant in the antipassive. The extended use of the antipassive i- is attested on obligatorily possessed nouns to enable their use without possessive affixes. Finally, my corpus-based study of semantic classes of verbs with a predilection for antipassive derivation revealed that the antipassive in Ainu is most likely to apply to a ‘middle section’ of the semantic transitivity hierarchy since it belongs to the lower individuation of patients (LIP) type, which is assumed to be more typical of antipassives in non-ergative languages.

Keywords: antipassive, Ainu, non-ergative languages, ‘fourth’ person, diachrony
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Typological background
  • 3.Featuring i- as an antipassive, distinct from personal i-
    • 3.1Standard use on verbs
    • 3.2Extended (absolutive) use of i- on nouns and other parts of speech
  • 4.Synchronic properties of the antipassive i-
    • 4.1Deriving antipassives
    • 4.2Combinability of the antipassive i- with other voice markers
  • 5.Semantic profile of antipassive verbs
  • 6.Diachronic pathways and cross-linguistic evidence for the development of the i- antipassive
    • 6.1‘Fourth’ person markers: No parallelism between a(n)- (A)/-an (S) and i- (O)
    • 6.2The diachronic source of the i- antipassive
    • 6.3‘Fourth’ person markers: What is the key function?
    • 6.4Matching the antipassive i- and ‘fourth’ person i- : Cross-linguistic evidence
  • 7.Summary
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • Source
  • References
Published online: 23 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.130.07bug
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Cited by 2 other publications

Janic, Katarzyna & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
2021. Chapter 1. The multifaceted nature of the antipassive construction. In Antipassive [Typological Studies in Language, 130], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Say, Sergey
2021. Chapter 6. Antipassive and the lexical meaning of verbs. In Antipassive [Typological Studies in Language, 130], ► pp. 177 ff. DOI logo

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