How suppletion in the past tense helped to eliminate the synthetic passive in Germanic languages (original) (raw)
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Chapter 10. The rise and fall of the passive auxiliary weorðan in the history of English
Word Order Change in Acquisition and Language Contact, 2017
This paper investigates the decline of the passive auxiliary weorðan in the history of English. We provide a new structural analysis of why and in what languages the passive diathesis can or cannot use the copula BE as an auxiliary. We will do so in a comparative perspective within Germanic and Romance. Our point of departure is not why weorðan WERDEN declines, but why the copular verb BE is incapable of functioning as a passive auxiliary in some languages, incidentally in some tenses, while it can be used in other languages/tenses. We provide 1. language internal structural variation in BE and WERDEN, 2. cross-linguistic i.e. comparative data of this variation, 3. diachronic data on Old English weorðan that ties the need of a separate passive auxiliary to the verb second (V2) constraint. It turns out that Old English displays a temporary rise and fall of strict-V2 around 1000, as well as a rise and fall of weorðan, and these developments can be related because they comply with Kroch's Constant Rate Hypothesis (CRH). Finally, we sketch the first contours of a grammatical model that umbrellas tense/aspect, V2, and the passive diathesis, which predicts this correlation. By modifying Giorgi's projection of the Reichenbachian event indexes S, E, and R onto the syntax, we show that the (in)equality of these indexes is not ruled by structural templates stored in the lexicon, but are dynamically ruled by the syntax. The interpretation of tense (past, present and perfect) makes use of indexical heads in the extended domain of VP. In V2 languages, the C head participates in the Reichenbachian calculus of tenses, while this is not the case in non-V2 languages. The (in)equality of the Reichenbachian indexes S, E, R are subject to the binding domains of the Binding Theory. The passive diathesis interacts with binding domains, because subject absorption lifts a domain border, and gives rise to the obviation of E and S. 2.1 Aspect sensitivity in Dutch (dialects) 2.1.1 Standard Dutch Standard Dutch is a language that has a specific passive auxiliary worden, the cognate of German werden. However, while German uses werden in all tenses and aspects, Dutch only uses werden in present (10b) and the simple past (11b). (10) a. Jan kust Marie present, active John kisses Mary 'John kisses Mary' b. Marie wordt door Jan gekust present, passive Mary WERDEN.pres by John kissed 'Mary is kissed/being kissed by John' (11) a. Jan kuste Marie past, active John kissed Mary 'John kissed/was kissing Mary' b. Marie werd door Jan gekust past, passive Mary WERDEN.past by John kissed 'Mary was (bing) kissed by John' In perfect tenses Dutch uses BE, as shown in (12a). This verb BE is a convolute of the perfect auxiliary and the passive auxiliary into one verbal form. Traditional grammarians have assumed that there is a deleted worden in these constructions, as this is the overt form in some (Northern) dialects (12b). (12) a. Marie is door Jan gekust perfect, passive (Standard) Mary AUX.perf.pass by John kissed 'Mary has been kissed by John' b. Marie is gisteren door Jan gekust geworden perfect, passive (dialectal) Mary AUX.perf yesterday by John kissed AUX.pass 'Mary was kissed by John yesterday' However, there is no need for this assumption of a deleted WERDEN, as all unaccusative verbs display the same property. (13) a. Marie gaat naar Amsterdam Mary goes to amsterdam b. Marie is naar Amsterdam gegaan perfect Mary AUX.pass.perf to Amsterdam gone Dutch shows auxiliary selection in perfect tenses, i.e. it uses HAVE with unergative verbs and BE with unaccusatives. So, the AUX in (13b) does not only encode perfect tense, but also passive argumental licensing: AUX.passive.perf. This has apparently be generalized in the standard language to agentive passive constructions. Notice that the Dutch AUX + ptc cannot only be used with a perfect tense reading but also with a past tense reading, i.e. it is a punctual past that is combinable with a past adverbials like gisteren 'yesterday', illustrated in (14a). The same is true for the passive past (14b). This implies that (14b) is not a static passive, as it would be combinable with present Petre_P_2014_Constructions_and_environments_OUP_Appendix_3_WAES_APPEND.xls Petre_P_2014_Constructions_and_environments_OUP_Appendix_3_GEWIERTH.xls These files are available at the CD-ROM that accompanies Petree's 2014 book.
Incipient Grammaticalisation: Sources of passive constructions in Old High German and Old English
In this paper we deal with Old English and Old High German copula constructions combining verbs denoting ‘be’ and ‘become’ with past participles, which are traditionally analysed as periphrastic passive constructions. We propose that these constructions cannot be seen as grammaticalised passives but rather as fully compositional structures. We investigate these constructions from an aspectual perspective and argue that the passive is only one of several possible readings for these constructions, though one that follows logically from certain combinations. In particular, we show that the copula verbs act as aspect operators that select different parts of the event structure of the past participle, and that transitivity is the crucial factor that gives rise to passive readings. As a conclusion, we outline a detailed corpus investigation in order to catalogue all possible readings and then ultimately make a contribution to the different developments of the passive in English and German.
2016
The Gothic language is unique among Germanic languages in several regards. It is the only one to retain a synthetic passive, an inheritance of the Indo-European medio-passive. It is also the only Germanic language to purportedly have no functional perfect tense, a tense that develops in full in all other Germanic languages in the form of various periphrastic constructions. Gothic does have periphrastic constructions that combine the verbs ‘be’ or ‘become’ and a perfective participle, but these forms are almost universally considered to be supplementary ways to express passive voice. My study examines the manifold semantics of these periphrases and seeks to show how things considered to be one type of entity make up separate parts of a passive system: one a regular passive, the other a perfect passive. By analyzing the complete number of these constructions in the Gothic corpus, I isolate separate axes of tense, aspect and voice. All three of these correspond to systematic modes of t...
On the use of passives across Germanic
2011
In this paper, we test the hypothesis that deaccented topicalization in a V2 language encodes the same information structure as passivization in a non-V2 language. We use quantitative evidence from parallel parsed corpora in order to explore the use of these syntactic options. A cursory overview of the data appears to support a parallel between V2 topicalization and passivization. However, when the data is examined in more detail, this strong and attractive hypothesis is ultimately falsified. This leaves a question: although the two constructions are not the same, it is not obvious how to distinguish between their information structures under current assumptions about IS. Therefore, we will argue that this negative result is most useful in showing where the current understanding of the syntax-information structure interface is lacking. Finally, we suggest a way that the interaction between information structural constituency and syntactic constituency may help to distinguish between these two constructions, and suggest a new line of research into the syntax-IS interface.
Statal and Processual Passives in Old Saxon
Leuvense Bijdragen - Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology, 2006
In this paper, I present an analysis of the statal and processual passive in Old Saxon, using the theory of Cognitive Grammar (Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1987 Langacker , 1991. The data to be discussed are the examples of the statal and processual passive from the Heliand and Genesis.
Grammaticalization and deflexion in progress. The past participle in the Old English passive
Studia Neophilologica, 2018
This article deals with the Old English adjectival construction that consists of the copulative verb bēon 'to be' and the past participle. Grammaticalization is gauged as to the agreement between the subject noun phrase and the past participle and from the perspective of deflexion, which is considered the final stage of grammaticalization. The highest rates of agreement are found in AElfrician texts and translations from Latin, while other texts like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle not only evince remarkably lower figures of agreement, but also show a decrease over time. The conclusion is reached that, although the grammaticalization of the past participle in passive constructions is not complete on the basis of deflexion, the process is well underway in Old English.
Previous work has unearthed much about how grammaticalisation proceeds, but little to how it starts. This paper focuses on the development of passive auxiliaries from copula verbs, offering a model of the initial steps in the grammaticalisation process towards passive. The model emphasises the role of semantic factors in the compositional structure of the relevant copula constructions. We present evidence and a theoretical foundation for why atypical – " misfit " – constellations of constructions may begin the grammaticalisation path by prompting reanalysis. The data come from Old and Middle English and Old and Middle High German. We investigated the aktionsart combinations of copula constructions with 'become' (OHG werdan, OE weorðan) from Old English and Old High German to Middle English and Middle High German. The crucial difference between English and German is that combinations of 'become' and activity/semelfactive verbs become more frequent in German, which is what our theoretical model predicts.
The passive in English: a case of syntactic change
1986
One of the questions addressed in this dissertation is which grammatical category should be assigned to past participles, whether they are adjectives or verbs. Another question is the way in which passive constructions are derived in the grammar of English, either in the syntax or in the lexicon. The hypothesis, due to Wasow (1977) and developed by Lightfoot (1979), was that verbal passives must be derived in the syntax and that this derivation is an innovation in the history of English.^ We first review the arguments for a ...