Speaker: Jim Huang (Harvard)
Title: Variation in non-canonical passives
Time: Thursday, March 3, 12:30-1:45pm
Location: 32-D461
Cross-linguistically, there are two major strategies to produce passive sentences. One
produces passives by an operation that de-transitivizes (rather, unaccusativizes) the main
verb, and the other does so by superimposing an unaccusativized causative verb on a
clause that may itself be active. The first, canonical strategy is exemplified by the
English be passive, and the second, non-canonical strategy is exemplified by the
Mandarin bei passive. The English get-passive involves a combination of both strategies,
with an unnacusativ(ized) get superimposed on a passivized verb. My talk will address
three somewhat related aspects of the non-canonical passives.In Huang (1999) and Huang, Li and Li (2009) the Chinese bei passives are analyzed as
involving a semi-lexical verb with a thematic subject that is related to the event clause by
control or predication. In view of recent discussions of the control-vs-raising analysis of
get-passives and the chameleon character of unaccusatized causatives, I shall show that
both analyses of the non-canonical passives are possible, depending on the scenarios
involved, up to certain limits, each exhibiting its own characteristic grammatical
properties.I shall then look at three different verbs that have been treated as related to the passive in
Chinese: bei, rang and gei. It is shown that the verbs differ in the bandwidths in the
spectrum of meaning from the causative to the pure unaccusative, both internally and
cross-linguistically. The cross-linguistic variation is particularly true of gei between
Southern and Northern Mandarin. With respect to Northern Mandarin gei-VP sentences,
which has been the topic of important treatment by Shen and Sybesma (2010), I argue
that gei is best treated as a raising verb, an unaccusative verb akin to gibt as in German es
gibt and give as in English what gives.Finally, I discuss a new form of non-canonical bei passive that has emerged in Mainland
China, particularly in satirical writings on the web, exemplified by bei zisha, bei xiao-ang,
bei siwang, bei lüyou, bei shizong (literally, be suicided, be middle-classed, be died, be
traveled, be disappeared), etc. Relying on the lexical decomposition analysis of
causatives as in the previous two points, I propose that these involve the passivization of
mental causative sentences. I liken these to some examples in English, and surmise on
their parametric differences.