Abstract
This paper argues that the Sakha passive morpheme -IlIn- is the fossilised outcome of a bimorphemic 'passive of passive' construction still found in Modern Turkish. While this reanalyzed form is surface homophonous between passive and impersonal functions, we show that the two uses can be differentiated via several syntactic diagnostics and that the Sakha impersonal construction supports the existence of a syntactically-projected impersonal prounoun that may serve as Case Competitor and control/be controlled PRO. At the same time, the diachronic account presented in this paper has important implications for the reconstruction of the Common Turkic voice system and the status of ImpersP and VoiceP as distinct functional projections, instead suggesting that impersonal passive constructions involve iteration of VoiceP.
Highlights
In Turkish, doubling the passive morpheme -Il- productively results in an impersonal passive interpretation (Ozkaragoz 1986, Kiparsky 2013, Murphy 2014, a.o.):1(1) Harp-te vur-ul-un-ur war-LOC shoot-PASS-PASS-AOR ‘One is shot in war’(Ozkaragoz 1986: 77, ex. 1c)Recent work by Legate & Akkuù (2017) and Legate et al (2020) argues that this doubling involves two functionally distinct but homophonous morphemes which head distinct projections stacked atop each other: namely, ImpersP and VoiceP
We argue that Sakha has fossilised the originally doubled form in (1) and reanalysed it as a monomorphemic element, which retains its homophonous but structurally distinct dual function as both a passive and impersonal head
Our paper presents a novel account of the diachronic origin of the Sakha morpheme -IlIn- with implications for the Common Turkic voice system, and extends existing diagnostics teasing apart impersonal and passive constructions
Summary
In Turkish, doubling the passive morpheme -Il- productively results in an impersonal passive interpretation (Ozkaragoz 1986, Kiparsky 2013, Murphy 2014, a.o.):. Its base form can best be seen in the imperative: This morpheme has been described as alternating between two surface allomorphs: -n- following stems ending with a vowel and -IlIn- after stems ending with a consonant (Stachowski & Menz 1998: 424, Vinokurova 2005: 336, Ebata 2013: 18). Passive constructions in Sakha behave largely as expected, involving suppression of the agent (i.e. uol ‘boy’) and promotion of the theme (i.e. tynnyk-ter ‘windows’). This results in the loss of accusative marking in (9-b). B. *min polisija-lar-1nan tut-ulun-n-um 1SG police-PL-INS catch-PASS-PST-1SG Intended: ‘I was caught by policemen’ This is in contrast to Turkish, where passive constructions may re-introduce agents using a PP:. Throughout the Turkic languages, the passive morpheme is almost always a monosyllabic morpheme that is usually reflected by -l- or its dissimilatory allomorph -n- occurring after stems endings with -l-.5
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