Speaker: Christopher Legerme (MIT)
Title: Sulemana (2024) on Passives without Morphology
Time: Thursday, October 10th, 5pm – 6pm
Location: 32-D769
Abstract: For this week’s Morphun, I’m looking forward to presenting a cool recent paper by an alum of our department, Dr. Abdul-Razak Sulemana, who investigated passive constructions without morphology in Buli (Gur, Ghana). Despite lacking passive morphology, Sulemana argues that Buli exhibits true passive constructions with implicit arguments. We will explore the key evidence used in support of this analysis, including:
- Semantic interpretation of implicit agents
- A-movement of internal arguments
- Compatibility with by-phrases
I situate my discussion of Sulemana’s work within the broader typology of noncanonical passives informed by work from Chris Collins and Julie Anne Legate, considering Buli passives alongside other crosslinguistic examples of noncanonical passives for insight into the range of variation possible in passive constructions, with the theoretical implications brought about thereof for our understanding of voice systems in general. I conclude with some (and perhaps too cursory) remarks on my own ongoing work into similar passive constructions without morphology in Creole languages, where the facts do not straightforwardly support a similar analysis as Sulemana’s for Buli.