Towards a typology of middle voice systems

Abstract

The middle voice is a notoriously controversial typological notion. Building on previous work (e.g. Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins), in this paper I propose a new working definition of middle markers as inherently polyfunctional constructions which are partly associated with valency change in opposition to bivalent (or more) verbs and partly lexically obligatory with monovalent verbs. Based on this definition, the paper undertakes a systematic survey of 149 middle voice constructions in a sample of 129 middle-marking languages. Evidence from the sample shows that middle voice systems display a much richer variation in forms and functions than is reported in the literature. This richer empirical evidence challenges some of the mainstream views on middle marking, especially its purported connection with reflexivity and grooming-type events, and calls for an overall rethinking of the typology of the middle voice.

The rise of middle voice systems

“…In the typological literature, voice is defined as a grammatical category of the verb whose values correspond to specific mapping of the verb's semantic roles onto grammatical relations (Klaiman 1991: 1;Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019: 4;Bahrt 2021). 2 The existence of the middle as a distinct type of voice has been advocated since antiquity and studies on the middle have long been confined to the tradition of Indo-European studies (Inglese 2020: 9-14; for a history of research on the middle, see Zúñiga andKittilä 2019: 171-175 andInglese 2021). It is thanks to the groundbreaking work by Geniušienė (1987), Klaiman (1991), and especially Kemmer (1993), that the middle voice has become a topic of interest for linguistic typology.…”

“…In this paper, I follow the comparative concept of MM proposed in Inglese (2021). The defining characteristic of MMs is that they occur in at least two main contexts: (i) they are used with bivalent (or more) non-middle verbs to express valency-changing operations including passive, anticausative, reflexive, reciprocal, antipassive; (ii) they also obligatory occur with some (at least monovalent) verbs.…”

“…This is a general definition that captures the minimal properties of MM. In actual fact, MMs show a much wider range of usages (see Kemmer 1993 andInglese 2021). Other valency-related functions of oppositional middles include facilitative (e.g., Italian la carne si taglia facilmente 'the meat cuts easily'), impersonal (e.g., si balla 'one dances'), and self-benefactive (e.g., Mario si compra un libro 'Mario bought himself a book'; on the valency effect of this pattern see Kulikov 2010: 391).…”

“…This definition avoids the need to ground the identification of MMs on vaguely defined semantic criteria such as elaboration of events or the subject's involvement, and is better suited to achieve a meaningful cross-linguistic comparison. In particular, the inclusion of both oppositional and non-oppositional middles allows us to narrow down the identification of MMs to a homogenous set of elements and to keep them distinct from non-middle voice markers such as syncretic intransitivizers (with only oppositional verbs) and verb classification systems (with only non-oppositional verbs); see Inglese (2021) for further details.…”

“…Over the past decades, typological studies have progressively brought to light the synchronic formal and functional variation that exists in the middle voice domain across languages (Geniušienė 1987;Klaiman 1991;Kemmer 1993;Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019). In this paper, I follow the definition of middle marker (henceforth, MM) proposed in Inglese (2021). MMs typically occur in two contexts: when applied to bivalent (or more) verbs, they encode a range of valency changing operations such as reflexive, passive, and anticausative, while with other verbs the same marker shows an obligatory lexically specific distribution.…”