CASE MARKING OF PATIENT IN THE PARTICIPIAL PASSIVE CONSTRUCTION IN HILL MARI

Zakirova Aigul Nailevna, Muravyev Nikita Alexeevich

DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2021-2-23-38

Information About Author:

Zakirova Aigul Nailevna, postgraduate student. National Research University Higher School of Economics. 20 Myasnitskaya st., Moscow, Russia, 101000. E-mail: aigul.n.zakirova@gmail.com Muravyev Nikita Alekseevich, candidate of philology, associate professor. National Research University Higher School of Economics. 20 Myasnitskaya st., Moscow, Russia, 101000. E-mail: nikita.muraviev@gmail.com

The article provides an account of two participial passive constructions employing the -mə̑- participle in Hill Mari. The data was collected in 2017 and 2019 in the villages of Kuznetsovo and Mikryakovo of the Gornomarijskij district, Republic of Mari El. The two constructions with the -mə̑- participle differ in the first place in how the patient is marked: in one of them the patient is marked for nominative, whereas in the other construction the accusative marking is inherited from the transitive verb. The aim of this study is to compare the two constructions in terms of their syntax and semantics and explore the rules that govern the choice between them. In the existing literature two kinds of passive constructions are described: adjectival passive constructions with stative interpretation and verbal passive constructions with dynamic interpretation. The two Hill Mari -mə̑- constructions were expected to demonstrate the same distinction. In order to test this hypothesis, we considered a) the syntactic properties of the constructions, and the nominal or verbal behavior of the -mə̑- form in both cases; b) the aspectual semantics of the two constructions, i.e. the possibility of stative and dynamic interpretation in both constructions; c) the marking of the arguments in the constrictions, i.e. the possibility of overt expression of the agent and the referential properties of the patient. Syntactically, the passive construction with the nominative marking of the patient turned out to be an adjectival predication. This construction is stative, and the nominative patient NP is always definite. The construction with accusative patient marking is a verbal clause with a dynamic interpretation. The accusative patient NP may have any referential properties. However, both constructions can refer to habitual events, which needs further investigation. The observed properties of the two constructions lead to the following generalization: the construction with nominative patient marking denotes a resultant state of an event, whereas the construction with accusative patient marking denotes the event itself. This difference may be interpreted in the first phase syntax framework developed by G. Ramchand: in the nominative construction the patient is the Resultee, whereas in the accusative construction the patient is the Undergoer.

Keywords: Uralic languages, Hill Mari, passive, participle, resultative, case, aspect, referentiality, event structure

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Issue: 2, 2021

Series of issue: Выпуск № 2

Rubric: LINGUISTICS

Pages: 23 — 38

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