Impersonal Constructions in Oceanic

JP Blevins

University of Cambridge

Two aspects of impersonal constructions are of particular interest from a cross-linguistic perspective. The first is the use of unmarked verb forms (e.g., third person, singular, neuter, nominative/absolutive, etc.) in `deep' impersonal constructions with no thematic subject (Jakobson 1932, 1936, 1958). The second is the tendency for ‘surface’ impersonals, which merely lack a syntactic subject, to pattern formally with passive constructions or even to be misanalyzed as passive (Blevins, forthcoming).

Although both types of impersonal constructions are well-attested cross-linguistically, most formal analyses of deep and surface impersonal patterns have focused on Indo-European languages, or neighbouring languages, such as Balto-Finnic (Tommola 1997). This paper presents a preliminary classification of impersonal constructions in Austronesian, focusing initially on the variation exhibited in Yapese (Jensen 1977), Western Austronesian, Formosan and Oceanic languages. It is argued that the use of unmarked forms for deep impersonals and, to a lesser extent, the formal similarities with passive constructions, confirm the generality of the treatments of impersonals formulated on the basis of other, genetitically, areally, and typologically distant language families.

References

Blevins, James P. (forthcoming). Passives and impersonals. Journal of Linguistics.

Jakobson, Roman. 1932. Zur Structur des russischen Verbums. Charisteria Guilelmo Mathesio Quinquagenario:74-83.

Jakobson, Roman. 1936. Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre: Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague VI:240-299.

Jakobson, Roman. 1958. Morphological Observations on Slavic Declension: The Structure of Russian Case Forms. In American Contributions to the Fourth International Conference of Slavicists. The Hague: Mouton.

Jensen, John. 1977. Yapese Reference Grammar. Honolulu University of Hawai'i Press.

Tommola, Hannu. 1997. O supresive i ob ambipersonale. Trudy po russkoj i slavjanskoj filologii:173-187.