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Passive construction in your conlang(s)

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Passive construction in your conlang(s)

Postby Täzari » Wed 07 May 2014 10:16 am


I'm curious to know how the passive construction works in your conlang(s).
Here I present a short explanation of the passive construction of lözusöteli:

Taken a normal sentence with the verb in the active voice like

A lightning struck a tree.
Dunpæl binsætze enmakyi.

Dunpæl-Ø binsætz-e enmak-yi.
(lightning-NOMs strike.result-3ps tree-ACCs)

to form the passive sentence the A argument of the active sentence becomes an oblique object and the O argument becomes the S argument of the passive sentence. Meanwhile the modifier -ujaj-, indicating passive voice, is added between the stem and the personal ending of the verb.

A tree was struck by a lightning.
Enmaki binsætzujaje par dunpæle.

Enmak-i binsætz-ujaj-e par dunpæl-e.
(tree-NOMs strike.result-PASS-3ps by lightning-PRE1)

As regards the expression of the oblique argument the prepositive case is used accompanied by the preposition "par" if the agent is inanimate and by "pe" if the agent is animate.
Also both the prepositive1 and the prepositive2 can be used. Using the PRE1 denotes that the results of the action are visible, that they are clearly understandable or that we want to put emphasis on what happened. On the other hand, using the PRE2 denotes that the agent is involved in the action more distantly, the results are not directly attributable to the agent or we want to stress some other aspect of the situation, like in the following sentence:

A tree was struck by a lightning and burnt out.
Enmaki binsætzujaje par dünpöilsu a hvube.

Enmak-i binsætz-ujaj-e par dünpöil-su a hvub-e.
(tree-NOM strike.result-PASS-3ps by lightning-PRE2 and burn.out.result-3ps)

Here the focus of the sentence is not the fact that a tree was struck but that it burnt out.
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