participles and antipassive voice
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This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 7 Jun 2022, 16:41.
[comments] nlnnolwynnverbsparticiples
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11. 2024 Goals
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13. Captative verbs
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21. Culture: Food Rituals
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26. Demonstratives
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27. Discourse particles
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28. Emotion signifiers
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29. ergativity
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31. font characters
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33. Grammatical moods
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37. Intransitive Verbs
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39. Lesson #1: Verb basics
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This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
A participle is a form of a verb that is used in a similar way as an adjective or adverb. An example in English could be the form sing takes in the phrase: "the singing bird."
In Nolwynn, the antipassive voice is created using participles.
Participles have these qualities in Nolwynn:
- They can display person, number, aspect, and mood through the use of pronomial and aspect/mood affixes
- They are the only verb form that can show tense
- They can easily show negation
- They can display passive and active forms
Create participles by using one of these affixes in place of the pronomial infix:
| present | future | past | |
|---|---|---|---|
| active - performing an action | wolú | wolá | woló |
| passive - receiving an action | yú | yá | yó |
Active and passive pairs can be illustrated with the transitive verb tšopeey (to chop). Picture a woodsman approaching a tree with an axe, intending to chop it down. He is tšopwolá (about to chop) and the tree is tšopyá (about to be chopped). While swinging the axe, he is tšopwolú (chopping) and the tree tšopyú (being chopped). After the tree has fallen, he is tšopwoló (having chopped) and the tree tšopyó (chopped).
Further, participles can be modified by two optional processes:
- The non-accented part can be replaced with aspect and mood markers.
- You can show person and number by adding on the pronoun infix at the beginning like so: weylá, wayó, etcetera
The antipassive voice is a way to show the prominence of the agent’s actions.
The next examples showcase how the antipassive is useful in Nolwynn due to how unaccusative and unergative verbs behave. [To learn more about unaccuastive and unergative verbs, see the article on intransitive verbs.]
mera tswal
girl eat.3S
[something] eats the child
Confusingly for English speakers, tswal “eat” is an unaccusative verb in Nolwynn: the “missing” or implied argument is the agent/subject. Therefore, not marking the verb at all implies that something ate the child. But the following example is also ungrammatical:
*mera tswawel
girl eat<ERG>.3S
This is ungrammatical because tswal “eat” must have at least an object [the agent can be implied], and the ergative infix -we- expects two arguments [an object AND an agent]. Instead, to say that a child eats without specifying what, use the antipassive voice like so:
mera tswwolúal zalta
girl eat.PCP AUX
the child eats
The next short conversation shows how you can use the antipassive voice to move an patient out of the way and why it would be necessary in the context of discourse:
tšatu mera zalta?
what<AUX> girl do.3S
What is the child doing?
mera tswwolúal zalta
girl eat.PCP AUX
the child eats
tša zša tswwolúal zalta?
Q she eat.PCP aux
what does she eat?
eyrika rewa mera tswal
cake ERG girl eat.3S
The girl eats the cake
tšer eyrika tswawel?
who cake eat<ERG>.3S
who eats the cake?
mera tswwolúal zalta, ookxwey eyrika
girl eat.PCP AUX for cake
the girl eats the cake.
In the antipassive voice, the agent is promoted and the patient demoted. Sometimes this will involve the deletion of an object [patient], but it can also simply be moved to an oblique. Antipassive voice changes the subject of a verb from the ergative case [agent of a transitive verb] to the absolutive case [object if a transitive verb or the subject of an intransitive verb].
kxalina ka’emwaló rewa azwuzonunya tswal
the butterfly ate the bent flower
ozšwa kuléoyú slozyózua
breaking plate is dangerous
Negative participles cannot be active or passive and instead rely on context:
yoruzua zaltwoniig
never-ending nightmare
Notes:
There is some usage overlap with participles and unaccusative/unergative forms.
Participles are also used in creating relative clauses.
Here are some other articles that describe other details about Nolwynn's verbs:
participles
intransitive verbs
indirect objects
grammatical moods
captative verbs
ergativity
converbs
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