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| Title: | Theoretical aspects of the chiShona passive |
| Author: | Mugari, Victor |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Periodical: | Language Matters: Studies in the Languages of Africa (ISSN 1753-5395) |
| Volume: | 46 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 98-116 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
| Subjects: | Shona language grammar |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/10228195.2014.966855 |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses passivisation in chiShona (Zimbabwe) within the Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) theoretical framework. The author treats passives as operations on the argument structure of a verb, represented as a nested list just like causatives. He describes passive typology and explicate its morpho-syntactic characteristics with regards to complex predication. He concludes, in contradistinction to the valence altering causative counterpart that, though passives are complex morphologically, on the overall, they are not complex predicates. His conclusions are based on the unavailability of aktionsart alternations, lack of event modification and the inability to be accounted for through argument composition. The author reveals that chiShona intransitives passivise, which is evidence that passivisation is a backgrounding rather than foregrounding operation. He examines the relationship between passives and causatives, discovering that different passivisation possibilities are available, which depend on whether the causative type is morphological or periphrastic. Well-formed constructions are accounted for through HPSG formalism and the semantic meta-theory Lexical Resource Semantics constraint satisfaction mechanisms. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract] |
