Chapter 19

Antipassivization in Basque revisited

In this paper, we explore three phenomena that have been considered to be antipassives in Basque linguistics. First, we briefly review “ergative displacement” (Laka 1988), related to antipassives as mentioned by Heath (1976). This is not a bona fide instance of the antipassive, since the ergative displacement affects only the agreement pattern (the A argument appears indexed as S in finite verb forms) while the case frame and syntactic status of A and P are as in the default transitive construction; besides, there is no demotion or suppression of the P argument. Second, we review two biclausal constructions, namely the ari-progressive (Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina 1987; Laka 2006) and participial clauses (Ortiz de Urbina & Uribe-Etxebarria 1991). Although regarded as antipassives by Postal (1977) and Coyos (2002), respectively, their biclausality, long argued by some Basque linguists, is incompatible with the antipassive, which is monoclausal by definition. Finally, de Rijk (2003) labels as antipassives some intransitive constructions that alternate with transitive ones. This is the closest to true antipassives that can be found in Basque, but these constructions are lexically constrained and idiosyncratic, and unlike canonical antipassives attested in other languages of the world.