A Discussion of Passive Marking in Tujia:With an Eye on Passive Strategies in Tibeto-Burman Languages
The purpose of the paper is dual.One is to provide a compressive description of the expression of passive meaning in Tujia,arguing for the idea that passive meaning in Tujia is expressed by using reflexive pronouns.The other is to point out that passive meaning expressed by semantic or pragmatic mechanisms rather than syntactic ways is common in Tibeto-Burman(hereafter TB)language as well,though some languages may have passive constructions.According to the literature,there are two views on whether there are passives in Tujia.One holds that there are passive constructions which are marked by either ko35 or to21,while the other contends that there is no passive constructions in Tujia,ko35 or to21 being only an agent marker,used to indicate the agent role of the argument or to emphasize the agent.The present paper argues for the second approach.The main arguments come from three perspectives:no agent demotion,no promotion of patient and no valency are involved in constructions in which ko35 is used.Then it argues that the so-called passive meaning in sentences with agent marker results from both pragmatic deduction and translation.In Tujia,there are cases in which an object may be preposed for emphasis,and in these cases the agent is required to be marked with ko35.When such sentences are translated into Chinese,they are treated as passive constructions,which are actually not.Having argued that ko35 should not be treated as a passive marker,the paper moves on to claim that to21 is a reflexive pronoun rather than a passive marker.A reflexive(pronoun)has the function of demoting the agent,that is why a reflexive(pronoun)can be used to express passive meaning.Having established that there is no passive constructions in Tujia,the paper further presents many other strategies to express passive meaning in TB languages,with the purpose to show that Tujia is not isolated in the way passive meaning is expressed.There are six mechanisms which are observed in our research,which include:1)the agent is expressed as an impersonal pronoun or a noun with abstract meaning indicating human or things;2)marking the patient as definitive;3)using reflexive(pronoun)or causative;4)word order;5)periphery passive(auxiliary verb+main verb);6)passive constructions.That reflexive pronouns are used to express passive meaning is rarely reported in TB languages.This paper hence contributes not only to the expression of passive meaning in Tujia,but also to the typological research in mechanisms of expressing passive meaning in TB languages.
passive strategypassive markingTujiaTibeto-Burman languages
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