Indefinite agent, passive and impersonal passive: A functional study

Frajzyngier, Zygmuni

doi:10.1016/0024-3841(82)90036-5

Cited by 29 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…This is illustrated in (27) This alternation proves significant to our analysis when regular passive and impersonal transitive analogues of (27) are constructed, as in (28) While the regular passive in (28a) is ambiguous in sense between (27a) and (27b), the impersonal transitive construction in (28b) is only synonymous with (27a). Taken together, these facts demonstrate that the impersonal transitive construction, like impersonals in most languages (see Frajzyngier 1982), is restricted to [+ human] subjects. The subject expletive that appears in this construction has inherent noun class, person, and number features but can only put en ch mage a nominal belonging to the same noun class.…”

Section: Relation Between the Expletive Subject And The Initialmentioning

confidence: 81%

A challenge to Burzio’s generalization: impersonal transitives in western Bantu

Dubinsky¹,

Nzwanga²

1994

Ling

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This paper examines an unusual syntactic construction peculiar to Lingala and a number of other western Bantu languages. This construction, which we call impersonal transitive, involves a transitive verb with an impersonal third person plural subject along with an overt referential agent in an adjunct prepositional phrase. The verb in this construction does not exhibit passive verbal morphology but still fails to not assign its external θ-role. At the same time, it continues to assign structural case to its direct object, which remains in situ. As such, the impersonal transitive construction raises questions about the universal applicability of Burzio's generalization (1986) which claims that a verb's ability to assign structural case to its direct object is dependent on its assigning an external θ-role.

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Section: Relation Between the Expletive Subject And The Initialmentioning

confidence: 81%

A challenge to Burzio’s generalization: impersonal transitives in western Bantu

Dubinsky¹,

Nzwanga²

1994

Ling

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“…Collapsing (in)definitness with (non-)countability is a common weakness shared by approaches that deal with the semantic restrictions of impersonal passives. The pertinent condition on an impersonal passive is assumed to be an indefinite agent or actor (Frajzyngier, 1982;Nolan, 2006) or indefiniteness in general (Abraham and Leiss, 2006).…”

Section: Event-structural Homogeneity As a Results Of Referential Demomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While Shibatani's informants accepted the passives in (34), which are also judged as acceptable inPerlmutter and Postal (1983: 106),Frajzyngier (1982: 283) reports that (34) ''was emphatically rejected by a Dutch speaker who is not a linguist''. My informants judged such passives as fully acceptable.B.Primus / Lingua 121 (2011) 80-99 …”

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confidence: 91%

Animacy and telicity: Semantic constraints on impersonal passives

Primus

2011

Lingua

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“…Moreover, impersonals can be formed from unaccusative verbs that lack passive counterparts (Perlmutter 1978). In addition, the impersonal typically refers to an indefinite human agent (Frajzyngier 1982;Siewierska 1984). The Estonian voice system includes both of these oppositions.…”

Section: Voice Constructions In Estonianmentioning

confidence: 99%