Passive and anticausative constructions: A new perspective to morphosyntax and lexical semantic interfaces

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature that recognises the relationship between verbal argument alternations such as passives and anticausatives. However, alternation types in Bantu languages have been treated in a rather fragmented way. In addition, the relationship between passive and anticausative constructions with regard to the realisation of an implicit external argument poses a challenge to the study of argument alternations within and across languages. The present article examines the morphosyntactic and lexical-semantic properties of passive and anticausative constructions in Kiwoso (Bantu), invoking different combinations of Voice, vCAUS and Root, as assumed in the syntactic decomposition approach. The properties of change of state verbs in licensing the anticausative and passive alternations form an integral part of this article. This article argues that the passive and anticausative in Kiwoso are distinguished on the basis of a Voice functional head, which determines the nature of events expressed by passive and anticausative verb constructions. The distinction between the (non-) occurrence of na- and ko-phrases in Kiwoso provides diagnostic evidence for this property.