Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

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Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by WeepingElf »

A deponent verb is a verb which takes on the morphology of a passive form despite not being a passive and not contrasting with an active form of the same verb. The term is from Latin grammar, which has a synthetic passive. I have also found it used with other languages such as Old Irish, which also have synthetic passives. I know of no natlang with deponent verbs in which the passive is expressed periphrastically. The Romance languages, while having moved from a synthetic to a periphrastic passive, have ditched their deponent verbs, inflecting them normally like other active forms. Of course, there are a lot of languages I don't know, but are there examples of deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passive, or would that break a universal?
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Frislander »

Well the thing is that deponent verbs seem to be that they are an inflected language's response to the problem of unergative verbs: that is, verbs that don't generally take agent-like subjects, such as "fear", "try to" and "speak". These verbs seem to behave syntactically like other verbs in the languages which they are know from. So for a language which has a peraphrastic passive (such as English), which generally also lack overt case marking, there isn't the same "need" for it as they will probably behave just like ordinary verbs (in nominative-accusative languages).
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by zompist »

WeepingElf wrote:I know of no natlang with deponent verbs in which the passive is expressed periphrastically.
Well, how about Latin? Carthago delenda est has a passive meaning. Or you can say amatus sum.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Frislander »

zompist wrote:
WeepingElf wrote:I know of no natlang with deponent verbs in which the passive is expressed periphrastically.
Well, how about Latin? Carthago delenda est has a passive meaning. Or you can say amatus sum.
I think we can take "passive expressed periphrastically" to mean that it the only way to express passives. Also, do we ever really get periphrastic forms of the deponents being used passively? Amare is not a deponent verb, as I'm sure you're aware.
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Salmoneus »

WeepingElf wrote:A deponent verb is a verb which takes on the morphology of a passive form despite not being a passive and not contrasting with an active form of the same verb. The term is from Latin grammar, which has a synthetic passive. I have also found it used with other languages such as Old Irish, which also have synthetic passives. I know of no natlang with deponent verbs in which the passive is expressed periphrastically. The Romance languages, while having moved from a synthetic to a periphrastic passive, have ditched their deponent verbs, inflecting them normally like other active forms. Of course, there are a lot of languages I don't know, but are there examples of deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passive, or would that break a universal?
I think this may be a definitional/conceptual problem.
What does it mean for a verb to be passive in form but active in meaning? There is, after all, no such thing as an active or passive meaning (hence certain verbs can take differently-marked arguments in different language, and the same relationship can often be expressed by different verbs with different argument structures - like "X pleases me" vs "I like X").

What we mean by 'active in meaning' is just 'syntactically active': deponants are active in meaning because they have objects, which are coded as objects syntactically.

So what is "passive in form"? Well, partly that it looks intransitive, and then specifically that it looks intransitive in the way that passives are, not the way that active intransitives are.

So the issue arises in synthetic languages specifically because it is possible to have a conflict between how the verb is marked morphologically - it inflects like a passive - and how it is treated syntactically - it takes objects like an active.

If passives aren't marked morphologically on the verb, I think that by definition makes deponants impossible, because there is no conflict anymore.

What would an analytic deponant look like? "the meat is eaten the dog?" that's not syntactically a passive, because that's not the syntax that passives use. If you did have two classes of verbs, one set that looked like "the meat pleases the dog" and the other set that looked like "the meat is eaten the dog", you wouldn't really have deponants, you'd just have two different forms of the active verb (pleases vs is eaten). Or two different passive constructions for that matter (demoting passives like "the dog is pleased BY the meat" and non-demoting passives like "the meat is eaten the dog").

How would you distinguish a language with "analytic deponants" from a language with "lexically-determined non-demoting passives"?
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Benturi »

Salmoneus wrote:What does it mean for a verb to be passive in form but active in meaning?
Being passive in form but (unlike a real passive construction) taking a direct (accusative) object (as in veritatem loquitur)?
Salmoneus wrote:What would an analytic deponant look like? "the meat is eaten the dog?"
Rather "The dog is eaten the meat" (meaning "The dog eats the meat").

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Frislander »

Yeah, but as I said, the verbs which tend to be deponent are generally unergative, so things like "he is feared the dog" (meaning "he fears/is afraid of the dog") would be a more typical example.
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by zompist »

Frislander wrote:Also, do we ever really get periphrastic forms of the deponents being used passively?
Yes, as in the famous line from Seneca: Quidquid est natum, moritur. "Whatever is born, dies."

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by clawgrip »

Frislander wrote:Yeah, but as I said, the verbs which tend to be deponent are generally unergative, so things like "he is feared the dog" (meaning "he fears/is afraid of the dog") would be a more typical example.
Maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about, but is "fear/is feared" really an unergative verb? There doesn't appear to be any agency in that.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Sumelic »

English "to be born" seems pretty close to a deponent verb. I don't think it's normally considered to be one, though. It looks like the reason why "deponent verbs" are needed as a distinct class in Latin is that they use active forms for some parts of their paradigm, and passive forms for others, so they don't fit perfectly into either the "active" or "passive" paradigms, but constitute a third paradigm. English "to be born" is just conjugated like a normal passive verb, so it can be classified as a passive verb.

But even though it originated as the passive counterpart of "to bear," I don't think of it that way, and modern spelling differentiates between "born" in "to be born" and "borne" as the past participle of "to bear."

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Frislander »

clawgrip wrote:
Frislander wrote:Yeah, but as I said, the verbs which tend to be deponent are generally unergative, so things like "he is feared the dog" (meaning "he fears/is afraid of the dog") would be a more typical example.
Maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about, but is "fear/is feared" really an unergative verb? There doesn't appear to be any agency in that.
No, unergative means a non-angent8vive subject.
Sumelic wrote:English "to be born" seems pretty close to a deponent verb. I don't think it's normally considered to be one, though. Technically, it is derived from the active verb "to bear," but I don't think of it that way, and modern spelling differentiates between "born" in "to be born" and "borne" as the past participle of "to bear."
Yeah, the thing with "be born" is the the "born" bit can be analysed as an adjective, c.f. "be afraid of".
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by zompist »

Frislander wrote:Yeah, the thing with "be born" is the the "born" bit can be analysed as an adjective, c.f. "be afraid of".
I'm not sure that's a great example, since "afraid" is just a respelled participle (like "scared").

Participles are obviously something like adjectives, but they fail a lot of the usual tests. They don't have comparative or superlative forms, they resist adjective modifiers ("?I'm very born", "?I'm so born") and causatives ("*She made me born"). For that matter they don't seem to do well at the most basic function of adjectives— predication and modifying nouns:

?I'm born.
?That's a born baby.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Frislander »

zompist wrote:
Frislander wrote:Yeah, the thing with "be born" is the the "born" bit can be analysed as an adjective, c.f. "be afraid of".
I'm not sure that's a great example, since "afraid" is just a respelled participle (like "scared").

Participles are obviously something like adjectives, but they fail a lot of the usual tests. They don't have comparative or superlative forms, they resist adjective modifiers ("?I'm very born", "?I'm so born") and causatives ("*She made me born"). For that matter they don't seem to do well at the most basic function of adjectives— predication and modifying nouns:

?I'm born.
?That's a born baby.
I take your point, zompist. However, "be born" is a (pretty strongly) intransitive verb, whereas deponents such as "fear" or "suffer" seem to be more typically transitive, unergative verbs which, if they were not deponent, would have passive forms anyway.
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by clawgrip »

Frislander wrote:
clawgrip wrote:
Frislander wrote:Yeah, but as I said, the verbs which tend to be deponent are generally unergative, so things like "he is feared the dog" (meaning "he fears/is afraid of the dog") would be a more typical example.
Maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about, but is "fear/is feared" really an unergative verb? There doesn't appear to be any agency in that.
No, unergative means a non-angent8vive subject.
This does not seem to be the case based on every bit of information I know. As far as I understand it, unergative means an intransitive verb with a subject equivalent to the ergative argument in a transitive verb, i.e. an agent. Unaccusative verbs are those with subjects equivalent to accusative arguments in a transitive verb, i.e. a patient etc.
The Unaccusative Hypothesis, which was originally proposed by Perlmutter (1978) within the context of Relational Grammar, distinguishes between the two classes of intransitive verbs; one subclass of intransitive verbs, known as unergative verbs, entails “willed or volitional acts” (e.g. dance, run, walk, work, etc.) and the other sub-class, unaccusative verbs, denotes “unwilled or non-volitional acts” (e.g. burn, melt, fall, happen, etc.).

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Frislander »

clawgrip wrote: This does not seem to be the case based on every bit of information I know. As far as I understand it, unergative means an intransitive verb with a subject equivalent to the ergative argument in a transitive verb, i.e. an agent. Unaccusative verbs are those with subjects equivalent to accusative arguments in a transitive verb, i.e. a patient etc.
The Unaccusative Hypothesis, which was originally proposed by Perlmutter (1978) within the context of Relational Grammar, distinguishes between the two classes of intransitive verbs; one subclass of intransitive verbs, known as unergative verbs, entails “willed or volitional acts” (e.g. dance, run, walk, work, etc.) and the other sub-class, unaccusative verbs, denotes “unwilled or non-volitional acts” (e.g. burn, melt, fall, happen, etc.).
Oh, right, I think it's probably unaccusative I mean then. Sorry about that.
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by vokzhen »

Frislander wrote:Oh, right, I think it's probably unaccusative I mean then. Sorry about that.
The terminology is not particularly straightforward. Unergative is S=A and unaccusative is S=P, but there's also the terms ergative (S=P ambitransitive) and accusative (S=A ambitransitive). So unergative and accusative verbs are paired together as S=A, and unaccusative and ergative verbs are paired together as S=P. Which makes sense when you think about it, but is definitely one of those things that's easily confused.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by hwhatting »

Sumelic wrote: It looks like the reason why "deponent verbs" are needed as a distinct class in Latin is that they use active forms for some parts of their paradigm, and passive forms for others, so they don't fit perfectly into either the "active" or "passive" paradigms, but constitute a third paradigm.
No, they don't use active forms. The point of deponents is that they only have passive forms, that's how they got their name - the ancient grammarians said that they "put away" (deponere) their active forms.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Richard W »

hwhatting wrote:
Sumelic wrote: It looks like the reason why "deponent verbs" are needed as a distinct class in Latin is that they use active forms for some parts of their paradigm, and passive forms for others, so they don't fit perfectly into either the "active" or "passive" paradigms, but constitute a third paradigm.
No, they don't use active forms. The point of deponents is that they only have passive forms, that's how they got their name - the ancient grammarians said that they "put away" (deponere) their active forms.
Just to confuse matters, there are the semi-deponent verbs in Latin, which use active forms in the non-perfect tenses and the obligatorily periphrastic forms in the perfect tenses. Of course, one can argue that their perfect participles are inherently active in meaning.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Sumelic »

hwhatting wrote:
Sumelic wrote: It looks like the reason why "deponent verbs" are needed as a distinct class in Latin is that they use active forms for some parts of their paradigm, and passive forms for others, so they don't fit perfectly into either the "active" or "passive" paradigms, but constitute a third paradigm.
No, they don't use active forms. The point of deponents is that they only have passive forms, that's how they got their name - the ancient grammarians said that they "put away" (deponere) their active forms.
Hmm. Maybe I misunderstood something, or I didn't express myself clearly. I don't speak Latin, but I was basing my statement on this PDF: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/101/Deponent.pdf It says deponent verbs use the active forms for the present active participle, the future active participle and the future active infinitive (which seems to be built using the future active participle and "sum"). It's true that's not a lot, and it doesn't include any finite forms.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by hwhatting »

Sumelic wrote:Hmm. Maybe I misunderstood something, or I didn't express myself clearly. I don't speak Latin, but I was basing my statement on this PDF: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/101/Deponent.pdf It says deponent verbs use the active forms for the present active participle, the future active participle and the future active infinitive (which seems to be built using the future active participle and "sum"). It's true that's not a lot, and it doesn't include any finite forms.
Yes, you're right about the participles; I was thinking about the finite forms. From a Latin synchronous perspective, the use of active participles fills in some holes in the paradigm as Latin doesn't have a present or a future passive participle; the passive participle in itself is historically a past passive participle, and while e.g. amatus sum means "I am loved", with deponents this construction is used for the perfect (locutus sum "I have spoken"), as the deponents don't have a synthetic perfect. From a historical perspective, the use of the -nt- participle with a formally passive verb may be an archaism, as in Hittite the -nt- participle has a passive meaning with transitive verbs and an active meaning with intransitive verbs.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Richard W »

hwhatting wrote:... while e.g. amatus sum means "I am loved"...
Are you sure that's good Latin? I was taught that amatus sum meant "I was loved" or "I have been loved", and, of course, for "I am loved" one should have amor. Of course, there is again the problem of the missing present passive participle.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Salmoneus »

hwhatting wrote: while e.g. amatus sum means "I am loved", with deponents this construction is used for the perfect (locutus sum "I have spoken"),
Tangentially, may be interesting to compare the later Romance (and, historically, English) distinction between verbs that take habere and verbs that take esse... because the esse verbs mirror the deponent construction here, in using "to be" plus a past participle to encode a perfect. The exact set of verbs that do this varies from language to language, and also over time (it used to be commonplace in English, but now these perfects are limited to archaisms and quotations*; it's also declined in several italian languages iirc), but I think they're often for the sort of meanings that deponent verbs used to be used for.



*looking at the libretto of the Messiah, we find examples with both passive and active verbs. The passive is more natural today:
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.
But even there, explicit passive perfects are much more common now. And with the active:
Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee
...it's basically not seen anymore in normal speech.
[and a more famous line combines them both: For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given
However, even in the KJB, the construction isn't universal: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way
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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by jal »

Dutch also has perfects with "to be", besides those with "to have", while encoding the passive also with "to be" + participle. More than German, that has afaik an obligatory "werden" (or is it "worden"?) in passives, Dutch passives and perfects with "to be" look the same.

"ik ben gegaan" - I went
"ik ben geslagen" - I was hit
"ik ben vergeten" - I forgot
"ik ben verslagen" - I was defeated
etc.


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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by hwhatting »

Richard W wrote:
hwhatting wrote:... while e.g. amatus sum means "I am loved"...
Are you sure that's good Latin? I was taught that amatus sum meant "I was loved" or "I have been loved", and, of course, for "I am loved" one should have amor. Of course, there is again the problem of the missing present passive participle.
Yes, you're right, sorry. The perfect passive of non-deponent verbs works exactly like the perfect of deponents. I mixed that up with later developments in the Romance languages.

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Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

Post by Valdeut »

Maybe the history of the passive matters. I would guess that deponent verbs are more common in languages where the passive voice evolved from an earlier reflexive/middle voice, and less common in languages where it is formed by a periphrastic construction with a participle. Deponent verbs seem to retain some of the function of an earlier more general middle voice, but the participal construction never had these functions.

Swedish has a synthetic and a periphrastic passive (in addition to some other periphrastic constructions that may be regarded as passives):
bli-passive: Staketet blir målat av typologen.
s-passive: Staketet målas av typologen.
‘The fence is painted by the typologist.’

In many cases, either construction may be used without much change in meaning. The s-passive is probably more common for most verbs. The periphrastic bli-passive is formed with the verb bli (‘to become’) and the past participle (which shows agreement with the subject).

The synthetic s-passive is formed by a suffix -s, which is historically from a reflexive pronoun, either the accusative sik or the dative *sēʀ (Old West Norse -sk is obviously from the accusative, it's unclear if the East Norse form lost the *k or if it's from the dative). The s-form had many uses in Old Swedish. It was occasionally used more or less interchangeably with a full reflexive pronoun. It also had some of the typical middle-voice uses, as well as being used as a passive in some cases (which is the most common use in Modern Swedish). In Old West Norse, the corresponding form is more of a typical middle voice.

In Modern Swedish, there are still a number of verbs where the s-form is not passive. This is particularly common with naturally reciprocal situations (kyssa ‘to kiss’, kyssas ‘to kiss each other’). There are also a number of deponent verbs, that only have an s-form (or where the s-less form is rare or archaic). These can sometimes be transitive:
Jag minns dig ‘I remember you’
Jag andas luft ‘I breathe air’
Jag kräks upp surströmming ‘I vomit surströmming’

Deponent verbs in Swedish often refer to bodily functions or mental states.

The non-passive uses of the s-form can't be substituted for the periphrastic bli-passive. The bli-passive is particularly common with verbs where there is an s-form with another meaning.
Vi kysses ‘we kiss each other’ or (rarely) ‘we are being kissed’
Vi blir kyssta ‘we are being kissed’

Some deponent verbs could possibly have a bli-passive although they sound a little odd:
Surströmmingen blir uppkräkt av mig ‘the surströmming is vomited out by me’

As far as I'm aware, there are no periphrastic deponent verbs in Swedish.

———

Also note that Swedish has two types of reflexive formations:
Emphatic reflexive: han skadade sig själv ‘he injured himself (and it was his own fault)’
Weak reflexive (middle?): han skadade sig ‘he was injured’

The weak reflexive has many of the (possibly middle-like) uses of reflexive formations in European langauges (such as forming anticausatives) but in Modern Standard Swedish, it can't be used arbitrarily to mark that the subject and object are one and the same. In other words, you can't say "*han hörde sig säga det" to mean ‘he heard himself say it’. For this use, the emphatic reflexive is obligatory: "han hörde sig själv säga det".

There are verbs that are obligatorily weakly reflexive, like bete sig ‘to behave’.

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