Antipassive in Matses

Bibliographic Data

ID20381254
AuthorsDavid W Fleck (0000-0003-2178-3879, La Trobe University, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume30
Issue3
Pages551-573
Publication date2006-07-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0378-4177 • E-ISSN: 1569-9978
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/sl.30.3.03fle
OpenAlexW2094639261
LanguageEN
Citations received10

In this paper I analyze ergative patterns and the antipassive construction in Matses, a Panoan language spoken in western Amazonia. The Matses antipassive appears initially to be fairly typical, but is unique in that, in addition to the cross-linguistically typical indefinite Patient reading, it can also be used to code an unmentioned first-person Patient. Furthermore, only verbs specifying human O’s can take the antipassive suffix, and only verbs coding significantly affected Patients can have an indefinite reading. This is exactly the opposite of what one would expect of an antipassive construction. This atypical distribution of the Matses antipassive is explained by a combination of interacting factors, including a first-person empathy phenomenon and accommodation to a competing functionally similar object omission construction

Accommodation · Epistemology · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Phenomenon · Suffix · Categorization, perception, and language · Communication · Computer Science · Language and cultural evolution · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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