Syntax – Week 9, Lecture 2
& Week 10, Lecture 1
1
Multi-clause Sentences
1.1 S/A pivots and multi-clause sentences
Recall that languages typically like to present known information first, and
then move to new information in discourse. Thus we can account for the
following sentences:
1. What did your mother do?
– She sent a letter of protest to the manager.
– ? A letter of protest was sent by her to the manager.
2. What happened to your mother?
– She was taken away by one of the guards.
– ? One of the guards took away my mother.
When we are linking sentences together in discourse, we still want to follow
the same pattern:
John went home and he slept.
In the second clause, the subject John is the given information, and as he
has already been introduced into discourse, he can be represented as a
pronoun. However, we saw that languages can go even further – because
John is given information in the second clause, he can be skipped entirely:
John went home and ____ slept (S=S, ____ = John)
John went home and ____ ate dinner (S=A, ____ = John)
John ate dinner and ____ left (A=S, ____ = John)
John ate dinner and ____ watched TV (A=A, ____ = John)
These sentences are straightforward, because John is the subject in both
Syntax – Week 9, Lecture 2
& Week 10, Lecture 1
2
clauses. However, often in discourse John could be the natural patient of
the second clause. This causes a problem: We want John to appear first in
the second clause if he is shared information, but if he’s also the patient,
then English word order (SVO) requires that he come last. Consider the
following:
1. John went home.
2. An intruder beat up John.
To directly link these together in discourse is clumsy:
John went home and an intruder beat John up.
Instead, we make use of the passive, to bring John to the front of the
second clause. Furthermore, when we make John the subject of the second
clause, he can now be optionally skipped:
John went home and he was beaten up by an intruder.
John went home and __ was beaten up by an intruder. (S = S, ___ = John)
Consider:
John watched TV and ___ was beaten up by an intruder (A=S)
John watched TV and ___ fed his dog (A=A)
John was beaten up by an intruder and ___ telephoned the police (S=A)
John was beaten up by an intruder and ___ was robbed by his accomplice (S=S)
So – because we want given information to be presented first in a clause
(and also preferably, skipped), we do the following:
1. Use a passive (if necessary) to bring the given information to the
subject position.
2. Then make use of our S,A pivot to skip the subject of the second
clause.
Syntax – Week 9, Lecture 2
& Week 10, Lecture 1
3
We need the passive because sometimes events dictate that the given
information would naturally be the object of a transitive verb in the second
clause.
1.2 What about Ergative Languages? The Anti-Passive Construction.
We saw that languages with ergative syntax have a S,P pivot. That is, a S or
P in the second clause can be skipped if it is co-referential with a S or P in
the previous clause.
However, these languages are going to have the opposite problem to
languages with a S,A pivot. When one entity is the subject of both an
intransitive and a transitive verb within the same sentence (i.e., it’s an S
and an A), it can’t be left out in the second clause, because in these
languages, S can only link to P, not to A. So what is the solution?
Consider Dyirbal – a language we know to have a S,P pivot. Dyirbal has a
marked construction called the anti-passive with the following features:
● It applies to a transitive verb (with an A and a P) and makes it
intransitive.
● It marks the verb with a suffix -nga(y)
● The A of the originally transitive construction is now an S in the anti-
passive construction
● The P of the original transitive is now marked as an oblique (in
dative or instrumental case) or is omitted.
Dyirbal:
Syntax – Week 9, Lecture 2
& Week 10, Lecture 1
4
1. Balan jugumbil baninyu
the.ABS woman.ABS came
“The woman came” (woman = S)
2. Balan jugumbil banggul yara-nggu buran
the.ABS woman.ABS the.ERG man-ERG saw
“The man saw the woman” (man = A, woman = P)
3. Bayi yara bagun jugumbil-gu bura-nga-nyu (anti-passive)
the.ABS man.ABS the.DAT woman-DAT see-antipass-past
“The man saw the woman” (truth conditionally equiv. to 2) (man = S)
4. Bala yugu banggul yara-nggu gundan
the.ABS tree.ABS the.ERG man-ERG cut
“The man cut the tree” (man=A, tree = P)
5. Bayi yara bagu yugu-gu gundal-nga-nyu (anti-passive)
the.ABS man.ABS the.DAT tree-DAT cut-antipass-past
“The man cut the tree” (truth conditionally equiv. to 4) (man = S)
6. Bayi yara bagan jugumbilgu buranganyu […] baninyu
the.ABS man.ABS the.DAT woman-DAT see-a/p-pst [ ] came
“The man saw the woman and came” (S(