Mam voice

Mam (Mamean Mayan) has an antipassive and several passives, described in England's sketch and, for San Juan Atitán Mam, in Scott's grammar. The antipassive suffix -n, -an after a consonant, makes the subject the sole argument marked on the verb, by Set B, and demotes the object to a phrase with a relational noun; it serves for an unmentioned patient, for an incorporated object and for the extraction of a transitive subject, Mam having no agent-focus form of its own (Extraction.lean). Of the passives, the general syntactic ones are -Vt, -et in San Juan Atitán, and a null one, both making the patient the sole argument marked on the verb, the agent optional in a phrase with the agentive relational noun -u'n; the lexical passive -j adds that the agent lost control of the action. Mam has no applicative and no productive causative.

Implementation notes

The null passive has the empty marker and so is uncoded in Creissels's sense, an alternation with no verbal coding, as his reading of the Bambara passive is; the frame pair records what tells it from the active, an intransitive derived construction with the agent maintained, and the Set B marking follows from that transitivity. That Ø fills the paradigm slot of -Vt and -j is the Mayanist analysis of the paradigm and is left to the studies.

Main definitions

• Mam.active, antipassive, passive, nullPassive, lexicalPassive — the voices
• Mam.voices — the inventory

Main results

• Mam.not_isTransitive_of_ne_active — every voice but the active derives an intransitive construction

References

• [Eng17]
• [Sco23]

def Mam.active : Voice

The active, the transitive construction.

Equations

• Mam.active = Voice.active

def Mam.antipassive : Voice

The antipassive -n, the object demoted to a relational-noun phrase.

Equations

• Mam.antipassive = Voice.antipassive.marked [Morphology.Morph.suff "n"]

def Mam.passive : Voice

The general passive -Vt, the agent optional in an -u'n-phrase.

Equations

• Mam.passive = Voice.passive.marked [Morphology.Morph.suff "Vt"]

def Mam.nullPassive : Voice

The general passive with no suffix, told from the active by its intransitive inflection.

Equations

• Mam.nullPassive = Voice.passive

def Mam.lexicalPassive : Voice

The lexical passive -j, the agent having lost control of the action.

Equations

• Mam.lexicalPassive = Voice.passive.marked [Morphology.Morph.suff "j"]

def Mam.voices : Finset Voice

The active, the antipassive and the three passives.

Equations

• Mam.voices = {Mam.active, Mam.antipassive, Mam.passive, Mam.nullPassive, Mam.lexicalPassive}

theorem Mam.not_isTransitive_of_ne_active (v : Voice) : v ∈ voices → v ≠ active → ¬v.derived.IsTransitive

Every voice but the active derives an intransitive construction, the verb marking one argument by Set B ([Eng17]).