Impersonal or passive? Some approaches to analysis (based on the Veps and Estonian languages)

• Published in: Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics
• Main Author: Polina Oskolskaia
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Estonian
• Published: University of Tartu Press 2024
• Subjects: impersonal; passive; Finnic languages; Veps language; Estonian language; corpus study; Philology. Linguistics; P1-1091; Finnic. Baltic-Finnic; PH91-98.5; veps language
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2024.15.1.07; https://doaj.org/article/2ed3a349be664a6c9b9abff08895b6ca

This article deals with constructions of the form “to be + passive participle” in Veps and Estonian. Depending on the syntactic context, these constructions can be considered either impersonal or passive. Cases where the syntactic properties of the context do not allow us to determine whether a construction is impersonal or passive are the main object of the study. The article proposes two approaches to analysing these cases, using a corpus study in Veps and the analysis of a native speaker survey in Estonian. Analysis of the Veps data shows that 66% of the sample collected cannot be unambiguously attributed to the impersonal or the passive construction. At the same time, there is a correlation between polarity and construction choice: the passive occurs more often in negative contexts and the impersonal occurs more often in affirmative contexts. The results of the Estonian survey show that 88% of constructions are interpreted as passive. Verb tense and stative/dynamic semantics do not correlate with construction type, but there is a relationship between the preverbal position of the nominative argument and the passive construction. It was assumed that in the impersonal construction the argument has a special status and is not a prototypical object but has both object and subject features. Kokkuvõte. Polina Oskolskaia: Kas impersonaal või passiiv? Mõned lähenemised umbisikuliste konstruktsioonide analüüsile (vepsa ja eesti keele materjali põhjal). Artiklis käsitletakse „olla + passiivne partitiiv -tud“ konstruktsioone vepsa ja eesti keeles. Sõltuvalt süntaktilistest tingimustest võivad need konstruktsioonid olla impersonaalsed või passiivsed. Artiklis uuritakse neid olukordi, kus konteksti süntaktilised omadused ei võimalda täpselt kindlaks teha, kas konstruktsioon on impersonaalne või passiivne. Tehakse ettepanek kaaluda kahte lähenemist selliste olukordade analüüsimiseks vepsa keele korpusuuringu ja eesti keele emakeelekõnelejate küsitluse analüüsi näitel. Vepsa andmete analüüs ...