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Can the agent be expressed overtly in a passive clause?

Summary

Passivization is a detransitivizing operation that takes a transitive clause (The dog bites the man.) and turns it into an intransitive clause by promoting the P argument (the man) to morphosyntactic S function. In the resulting intransitive clause, the former A argument (the dog) either vanishes or adopts an oblique function: The man is bitten (by the dog). ‘Mediopassives’, ‘anticausatives’ and the sort (e.g. x breaks the vase > the vase breaks) also count as passives. For languages with multiple passive constructions (e.g. ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ passives), this question should be answered 1 if the agent can be overtly expressed in any of these types of passive clauses. If the agent is overtly expressed, it may be unmarked or it may be marked in a number of ways: by case marking or adpositions, word order, etc.

Procedure

Code 1 if you find an example of a passive clause that has an overtly expressed agent.
Code 0 if a grammar explicitly states that agents cannot be overtly expressed in passive clauses.
Code 0 if a grammar contains a lot of examples of passive clauses, but no examples where there’s an overtly expressed agent.
Code 0 if the language does not have a morphosyntactic passive (expressed by means of word order, particles, auxiliaries, affixes, clitics).
Code ? if it is unclear whether the language has a morphosyntactic passive.
Code ? if you do not have enough data to say that it is impossible to express an agent in a passive clause (e.g. because it is not mentioned or because there are not many examples of passive clauses in the grammar).

Examples

Zuni (ISO 639-3: zun, Glottolog: zuni1245)

Zuni does not allow the addition of an agent role to a passive clause (Nichols 1997: 126) and is coded 0.

a. hom       nicikya     'uk-na-'kya
   1SG.ACC   ring        give-PASS-PST
   ‘I was given a ring.’ (Nichols 1997: 126)

b. *tom       'an   hom       nicikya     'uk-na-'kya
   2SG.ACC    P     1SG.ACC   ring        give-PASS-PST
   ‘I was given a ring by you.’ (Nichols 1997: 126)

c. *tom      'akkya     hom       nicikya   'uk-na-'kya
   2SG.ACC   with       1SG.ACC   ring      give-PASS-PST
   ‘I was given a ring by you.’ (Nichols 1997: 126)

Liko (ISO 639-3: lik, Glottolog: lika1243)

De Wit (2015: 374–375) describes a neutro-passive construction in Liko, which appears to be a passive construction that does not allow an overtly expressed agent. Because the agent cannot be expressed, he argues that this construction is not a true passive. Elsewhere, he concludes that there is no passive in Liko (De Wit 2015: 410–414). The neutro-passive does qualify as a passive for the purpose of Grambank, however, and the fact that the agent cannot occur with the neutro-passive triggers a 0 for this feature.

Some examples of the neutro-passive derivation, with -ɩ́k in Liko:

ká-nʊw-á ‘to tear’     → ká-nʊw-ɩ́k-á ‘to tear, intransitive’
kó-ɓún-ó ‘to break’    → kó-ɓún-ík-ó ‘to break, intransitive’

Raji (ISO 639-3: rji, Glottolog: raji1240)

Raji has a passive suffix, -i. Passive constructions allow the expression of the agent marked with ablative case (Khatri 2008: 27). Raji is coded 1 for this feature.

a. ram-ɦatiŋ     bʌtaŋ    dza–i–k-a
   Ram-ABL       rice     eat-PASS-SD-PST
   ‘Rice was eaten by Ram.’ (Khatri 2008: 27)

b. ram-ɦatiŋ     bʰwa    sʌtika
   Ram-ABL       bird    kill-PASS-SD-PST
   ‘The bird was killed by Ram.’ (Khatri 2008: 27)

References

de Wit, Gerrit. 2015. Liko phonology and grammar: A Bantu language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leiden: Leiden University. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Khatri, Ramesh. 2008. The structure of verbs and sentences of Raji. Kirtipur: Tribhuvan University. (MA thesis.)

Nichols, Lynn. 1997. Topics in Zuni syntax. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. (Doctoral dissertation.)

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