Circumstantial voice
In grammar, a circumstantial voice, or circumstantial passive voice, is a voice that promotes an oblique argument of a verb to the role of subject; the underlying subject may then be expressed as an oblique argument. A given language may have several circumstantial voices, each promoting a different oblique argument. One very common circumstantial voice is the ordinary passive voice, which promotes a patient to the subject position.
Circumstantials are conceptually similar to applicatives, which promote obliques to direct objects. However, applicatives may increase the valency of an intransitive verb by adding a direct object, while circumstantials cannot.
Circumstantials are found in the Malagasy language.
References
- Trask, R. L. (1993). A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08628-0.
External links
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 3/16/2013. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.