Chapter 7
Unspecified participant
A case of antipassive in Ainu
This paper shows that there are two
synchronically distinct i- markers in Ainu, viz.
the derivational antipassive i- and inflectional
‘fourth’ person object i- with the functions of
first person plural inclusive, second person honorific, and
logophoric. The derivational antipassive marker i-
‘person/thing’ can be regarded as an antipassive marker per
se based on its syntactic (eliminating a
patient/theme/recipient argument), semantic (denoting an unspecified
generic participant or lexicalizing it to a single or subset of
objects) and discourse (patient-defocusing) properties. Contrary to
the accepted view, I adduce the ‘antipassive to 1pl.incl.o’
scenario based on extensive cross-linguistic and Ainu-internal
evidence. The antipassive i-, in its turn,
originated in the incorporation of a generic noun
*i ‘thing/place/time’, which is not unusual in
languages without overt expression of the demoted O participant in
the antipassive. The extended use of the antipassive
i- is attested on obligatorily possessed nouns
to enable their use without possessive affixes. Finally, my
corpus-based study of semantic classes of verbs with a predilection
for antipassive derivation revealed that the antipassive in Ainu is
most likely to apply to a ‘middle section’ of the semantic
transitivity hierarchy since it belongs to the lower individuation
of patients (LIP) type, which is assumed to be more typical of
antipassives in non-ergative languages.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Typological background
- 3.Featuring i- as an antipassive, distinct from
personal i-
- 3.1Standard use on verbs
- 3.2Extended (absolutive) use of i- on nouns and other parts of
speech
- 4.Synchronic properties of the antipassive i-
- 4.1Deriving antipassives
- 4.2Combinability of the antipassive i- with other voice
markers
- 5.Semantic profile of antipassive verbs
- 6.Diachronic pathways and cross-linguistic evidence for the
development of the i- antipassive
- 6.1‘Fourth’ person markers: No parallelism between a(n)- (A)/-an (S)
and i- (O)
- 6.2The diachronic source of the i- antipassive
- 6.3‘Fourth’ person markers: What is the key function?
- 6.4Matching the antipassive i- and ‘fourth’
person i-
: Cross-linguistic evidence
- 7.Summary
-
Notes
-
Abbreviations
-
Source
-
References
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