Klallam Grammar Main Menu Klallam Grammar Alphabet and Sounds Basics Grammar Introduction: How to Use This Grammar 1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Object Pronouns 8 The Preposition and Word Order 9 Negative Words 10 More Negative Words 11 Self and Each Other 12 Questions: ‘Who?’ and ‘What?’ 13 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 14 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 15 Focus Pronouns and Answering Questions 16 Comparison 17 Conjunction: ‘And/with,’ ‘but/without,’ and ‘or’ 18 Questions: ‘When?’ 19 Time Expressions 20 More Time Expressions 21 Time Prefixes 22 Questions: ‘Where?’ 23 Some Place Expressions 24 Source, Way, and Destination 25 Serial Verbs 26 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 27 While Clauses 28 Adverbial Expressions 29 Intensifier Auxiliaries 30 Conditional Clauses 32 Lexical Suffixes 33 Collective Plural 34 Possessed Verbs 35 So Then ... 36 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 37 Indirect Quotes 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 41 Speech Act Particles 42 The Actual: To Be Continuing 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 45 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Source Objects 46 Reflexive, Noncontrol Middle, and Contingent 47 Activity Suffixes 48 Relative Clauses 49 Verbal Prefixes 50 Movement and Development Suffixes 51 Nominalizing Prefixes 52 Adverbial Prefixes 53 More Demonstrative Articles 54 Objects of Intent, Emotion, Direction, and Success 55 More Reduplication Patterns 56 Interjections 57 Rare Suffixes 58 A Fully Annotated Text 59 Texts to Annotate 60 Conclusion Appendices Klallam Dictionary Klallam-English and English-Klallam sections only

31 Passive Sentences and Shifting Vowels

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A passive sentence is, generally, one in which something is happening to the subject. For example, in English ‘I was helped’ is passive because the subject is undergoing the action—it is ‘I,’ the subject, that is getting helped.
An active sentence has a subject that is doing the action. The sentence ‘I helped him’ is active because it is ‘I,’ the subject, that is doing the helping. Transitive sentences (see §1) are active.

For every active sentence there is a passive sentence that means the same thing. For example, ‘The girl helped the dog’ is active, and ‘The dog was helped by the girl’ is its passive form.
                                         Active:         The girl helped the dog.
                                        Passive:        The dog was helped by the girl.
Most languages of the world has ways of forming both active and passive sentences. There are exceptions, but Klallam is not one. However, Klallam passives differ from English passives in two important respects.
The most obvious difference is that in Klallam a passive sentence is formed just by adding a suffix ‑əŋ to the basic transitive verb.

The second difference is that in English the passive is always optional. In English you can always replace a passive sentence with its active form. In Klallam, however, there are certain situations where the passive must be used.
Just as with the two basic types of object pronoun (discussed in §7), there are two basic forms of the passive: a control form, where the actor is in control, and a noncontrol form, where the actor is not in control.

Another feature of passives in English is that they can have an actor mentioned in a ‘by’ phrase, as in ‘she was helped by the boy.’ Klallam can add actors in a similar way. Review §8.1 on how the preposition ʔaʔ is used for this purpose.
 

This page has paths:

  1. Grammar Montler, et al.

Contents of this path:

  1. 31.1. Control passive: -təŋ
  2. 31.2. Noncontrol Passive: -nəŋ, -náŋ
  3. 31.3. Passive with noun phrase subject