Passive and middle in Indo-European: Reconstructing the early Vedic passive paradigm (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
This book is the first comprehensive study of the Vedic present formations with the suffix ya (‘ ya-presents’ for short), including both present passives with the accented suffix yá and non-passive -ya-presents with the accent on the root (class IV in the Indian tradition). It offers a complete survey of all ya-presents attested in the Vedic corpus. The main issue in the spotlight of this monograph is the relationship between form (accent placement, diathesis) and function (passive/non-passive) in the system of the -ya-presents – one of the most solidly attested present classes in Sanskrit. One of the aims of the present study is to corroborate the systematic correlation between the accent placement and the passive/non-passive distinction: passives bear the accent on the suffix, whilst non-passives have the accent on the root. The book also focuses on the position of passive within the system of voices and valency-changing categories in Old Indo-Aryan.
The Vedic -ya-presents: Passives and intransitivity in Old Indo-Aryan
2012
This book is the first comprehensive study of the Vedic present formations with the suffix -ya- ('-ya-presents' for short), including both present passives with the accented suffix -yá- and non-passive-ya-presents with the accent on the root (class IV in the Indian tradition). It offers a complete survey of all -ya-presents attested in the Vedic corpus. The main issue in the spotlight of this monograph is the relationship between form (accent placement, diathesis) and function (passive/non-passive) in the system of the -ya-presents – one of the most solidly attested present classes in Sanskrit. One of the aims of the present study is to corroborate the systematic correlation between accent placement and the passive/non-passive distinction: passives bear the accent on the suffix, while non-passives have the accent on the root. The book also focuses on the position of the passive within the system of voices and valency-changing categories in Old Indo-Aryan. Leonid Kulikov (PhD, Leiden University) is an Assistant Professor at Ghent University. He has published widely on synchronic and diachronic typology (in particular, on the diachronic typology of labile verbs and valency-changing categories), on the Vedic verb system and syntax, and on Vedic philology, and has edited numerous volumes in the fields of linguistic typology and Indology. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Historical Linguistics. His current research focuses on the grammar of early Vedic, a translation of the Atharvaveda, and the diachronic typology of transitivity and voice.
2013
There are certain discrepancies between the forms and constructions prescribed by Pāṇinian grammarians and the forms and constructions that are actually attested in the Vedic corpus (a part of which is traditionally believed to underlie Pāṇinian grammar). Concentrating on one particular aspect of the Old Indian verbal system, viz. the morphology and syntax of present formations with the suffix ‑ya-, I will provide a few examples of such discrepancy. I will argue that the most plausible explanation of this mismatch can be found in the peculiar sociolinguistic situation in Ancient India: a number of linguistic phenomena described by grammarians did not appear in Vedic texts but existed within the semi-colloquial scholarly discourse of the learned community of Sanskrit scholars (comparable to Latin scholarly discourse in Medieval Europe). Some of these phenomena may result from the influence of Middle Indic dialects spoken by Ancient Indian scholars, thus representing syntactic and morphological calques from their native dialects onto the Sanskrit grammatical system.
Two types of passive? Voice morphology and "low passives" in Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek
Passives cross-linguistically, 2021
This paper discusses passivization in Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, two ancient Indo-European languages. These languages have two different types of synthetic passive: the inflectional passive, which expresses passivization by selecting a specific set of nonactive ("middle") endings, and the derivational passive, which uses a specifically passive suffix, to which inflectional endings expressing Tense, Aspect, and Voice are then added. While the inflectional passive in both languages can be analyzed along the lines proposed by Alexiadou et al. 2015 for Modern Greek pas-sives, the main focus of this paper is on the derivational passives and their apparent "double marking" of Voice (via a designated suffix and via the inflectional endings). I argue that the suffix of the derivational passive is a diachronically reanalyzed in-choative v head that turned into a "low" passive head, providing further evidence for the cross-linguistic parametrization of passive morphosyntax.
Journal of Language Relationship, 2011
Drifting between passive and anticausative. True and alleged accent shifts in the history of Vedic ¢presents This paper focuses on the system of the Vedic present formations with the suffix ya-and middle inflexion, paying special attention to the attested accent patterns. On the basis of a study of the paradigmatic and syntactic features of this verbal formation we can conclude that the traditional analysis of some members of this class in terms of the passive/nonpassive (anticausative) opposition is inadequate. I will offer a short overview of the history of this class, concentrating, in particular, on several accent shifts which account for a number of exceptions to the general correlation between the semantics and accent placement (passives: accent on the suffix vs. non-passives: accent on the root). Some of these shifts can be dated to the prehistoric (Common Indo-Aryan?) period (cf. suffix accentuation in such non-passives as mriyáte 'dies'), while some others must be features of certain Vedic dialects, dating to the period after the split of Common Indo-Aryan.
Reconstructing passive and voice in Proto-Indo-European
2015
This article examines various aspects of the reconstruction of the passive in Proto-Indo-European (PIE), foremost on the basis of evidence from the Indo-Aryan (Early Vedic) and Greek branches. In Proto-Indo-European the fundamental distinction within the verbal system is between the active and middle, while specialized markers of the passive are lacking and the passive syntactic pattern is encoded with middle inflection. Apart from the suffix *-i̯(e/o)- (for which we cannot reconstruct a passive function in the proto-language) and several nominal derivatives, we do not find sufficient evidence for specialized passive morphology. The role of the middle (and stative) in the expression of the passive in ancient IE languages raises important theoretical questions and is a testing ground for the methods of syntactic reconstruction. We will examine the contrast between non-specialized and specialized markers of the passive in Early Vedic and Greek. Most Indo-European languages have abandoned the use of middle forms in passive patterns, while Greek is quite conservative and regularly uses middle forms as passives. In contrast, Indo-Aryan has chosen a different, anti-syncretic, strategy of encoding detransitivizing derivational morphology, though with the middle inflection consistently preserved in passive ya-presents. These two branches, Indo-Aryan and Greek, arguably instantiate two basic types of development: a syncretic type found in many Western branches, including Greek, and an anti-syncretic type attested in some Eastern branches, in particular in Indo-Aryan.
Passive to anticausative through impersonalization: The case of Vedic and Indo-European
2011
Vedic Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages attest a typologically remarkable change of passives to anticausatives. This semantic development is attested, foremost, for passives of several verbs of perception and knowledge (knowledge transfer) obviously, according to the scenario ‘Y is seen (known etc.) by smb.’ → ‘Y is seen (known etc.) [by smb.]’ → ‘Y is seen (known etc.) [by generic passive agent]’ → ‘Y is visible (famous, etc.)’. A special variety of this development is instantiated by the passive of a verb of speech, ucyáte ‘Y is pronounced’ → ‘Y [e.g. speech, musical instrument] sounds’. In addition, passive to anticausative transfer is attested for a small subgroup of verbs of caused motion. While in this latter case the rise of anticausative usages may be due to conceptualizing simple transitives as causatives (throw = ‘make fall, make fly’, etc.), in cases of verbs of perception and knowledge we observe the rise of the anticausative usages through the stage which is called ‘impersonalization’ in Siewierska 1984 and explained in terms of ‘objectivization of knowledge’, i.e. knowledge without a knowing subject. In connection with these verbs, I briefly discuss the relationships between ‘agentless’, impersonalized’ and ‘impersonal’ passives.