Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Antipassive voice
The antipassive voice is a verb voice found mostly in ergative languages. Like the passive voice, the antipassive decreases the verb's valency by one.
The antipassive works on transitive verbs by deleting the object (marked with the absolutive case) and changing the subject from ergative to absolutive.
- "Mary-ERG eats pie-ABS." → "Mary-ABS eats."
- "He-ERG is telling the truth-ABS." → "He-ABS is talking."
As with passive voice, the deleted argument can be re-introduced as an optional complement or oblique argument.
- "Mary-ERG eats pie-ABS." → "Mary-ABS eats from the pie."
Last updated: 10-11-2005 18:13:27
10-26-2009 08:16:03
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The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details