Kwak̓wala contains two suffixes traditionally labeled passives. However, one, -l, appears with stems that cannot be used as transitive Vs in active sentences. Moreover, both of these so-called passives can be shown to be derivational on lang-internal grounds, not plausibly derivable by movement rule. The notion that -l is a passive marker was no doubt based on the fact that the subject of Vs containing -l corresponds to the victim or target of some event; but these events are characterized by the property of being inherently not controllable by an outside agency or force - whether human or nonhuman. They may "happen," & so affect the victim, but they cannot be "done." The lexical origin of -l, for which the preceding considerations strongly argue, has as a direct consequence the fact that certain Kwak̓wala sentences that appear to involve the raising of constituents out of complement clauses, should instead be base-generated. 3 Figures. HA
ELP Language
Kwak̓wala
ELP Categories
Language Documentation, Research, and Archiving
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Document
Country
Canada
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University students
Scholars and researchers
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Linguistics
Grammars and Language Description
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