Japanese voice

Japanese has two passives in -(r)are-. The direct passive makes the object the subject and demotes the agent, which may be marked by niyotte; it needs a verb that introduces an external argument, so an unaccusative has none. The indirect or adversative passive adds an affected participant as subject to a verb of any frame, unaccusatives included, the initial subject taking ni only; the substitution of niyotte is Jo and Seo's test for the two.

Main definitions

• Japanese.directPassive — the direct passive of the transitive construction
• Japanese.indirectPassive — the indirect passive of a frame
• Japanese.DirectPassivizable — a verb that introduces an external argument

Main results

• Japanese.directPassive_isValencyDecreasing — the direct passive demotes the agent
• Japanese.newParticipant_indirectPassive — the indirect passive introduces an affected subject, the A of a transitive and the S of an intransitive construction

References

• [JS23]
• [Oza26]

def Japanese.directPassive : Voice

The direct passive: the object becomes the subject and the agent is demoted, expressible with niyotte.

Equations

• Japanese.directPassive = Voice.passive.marked [Morphology.Morph.suff "(r)are"]

def Japanese.indirectPassive (fr : ArgumentFrame := ArgumentFrame.np) : Voice

The indirect passive of a frame, the transitive one by default: an affected participant is the new subject, the initial subject becomes a ni-phrase and the complements keep their positions after it.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def Japanese.DirectPassivizable (w : Verb) : Prop

A verb the direct passive applies to: one whose voice type introduces an external argument.

Equations

• Japanese.DirectPassivizable w = ∃ vt ∈ w.voiceType, vt.AssignsTheta

@[instance_reducible]

instance Japanese.instDecidableDirectPassivizable (w : Verb) : Decidable (DirectPassivizable w)

Equations

• Japanese.instDecidableDirectPassivizable w = Japanese.instDecidableDirectPassivizable._aux_1 w

theorem Japanese.directPassive_isValencyDecreasing : directPassive.IsValencyDecreasing

theorem Japanese.newParticipant_indirectPassive : indirectPassive.newParticipant = some Voice.TermRole.A ∧ (indirectPassive ArgumentFrame.intransitive).newParticipant = some Voice.TermRole.S

The indirect passive introduces an affected subject: the A of a transitive verb's derived construction, the S of an intransitive verb's.