Antipassive Voice
Definition:
Antipassive voice is a voice in an ergative-absolutive language in which:
- a noun phrase that normally has ergative case instead has absolutive case
- a noun phrase that normally has absolutive case is marked as an oblique or an indirect object, and
- the salience of the normally absolutive noun phrase is, according to some analysts, decreased.
Discussion:
Antipassive is a kind of valency decreasing operation that results in a very intransitive-like verb. The verb takes on the formal characteristics of intransitive verbs in that language.
Source:
108, 161, 417
This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library. Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003.