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Klallam GrammarMain MenuKlallam GrammarAlphabet and SoundsBasicsGrammarIntroduction: How to Use This Grammar1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs2 Past and Future Tense3 Basic Speech Acts4 Nouns and Articles5 Possessive Pronouns6 Adjectives7 Object Pronouns8 The Preposition and Word Order9 Negative Words10 More Negative Words11 Self and Each Other12 Questions: ‘Who?’ and ‘What?’13 Subordinate Subjects in Questions14 Questions: ‘Whose?’15 Focus Pronouns and Answering Questions16 Comparison17 Conjunction: ‘And/with,’ ‘but/without,’ and ‘or’18 Questions: ‘When?’19 Time Expressions20 More Time Expressions21 Time Prefixes22 Questions: ‘Where?’23 Some Place Expressions24 Source, Way, and Destination25 Serial Verbs26 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’27 While Clauses28 Adverbial Expressions29 Intensifier Auxiliaries30 Conditional Clauses31 Passive Sentences and Shifting Vowels32 Lexical Suffixes33 Collective Plural34 Possessed Verbs35 So Then ...36 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes37 Indirect Quotes38 Questions: ‘Why?’39 Because40 Cause41 Speech Act Particles42 The Actual: To Be Continuing43 State, Result, and Duration45 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Source Objects46 Reflexive, Noncontrol Middle, and Contingent47 Activity Suffixes48 Relative Clauses49 Verbal Prefixes50 Movement and Development Suffixes51 Nominalizing Prefixes52 Adverbial Prefixes53 More Demonstrative Articles54 Objects of Intent, Emotion, Direction, and Success55 More Reduplication Patterns56 Interjections57 Rare Suffixes58 A Fully Annotated Text59 Texts to Annotate60 ConclusionAppendicesKlallam DictionaryKlallam-English and English-Klallam sections onlyMontler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a941749101
44 Participant Roles and Middle Voice
12018-07-20T18:59:19-07:00Montler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a941749101309044plain7799142021-07-14T14:16:36-07:00Montler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a941749101In nearly every sentence in every language there are participants. The participants are the people, animals, and things that take part in the action or state the sentence describes.
For an example of participants, take the English sentence ‘The man caught the bear.’ Here there are two participants: ‘the man’ and ‘the bear.’ Now compare that sentence with this one ‘The bear caught the man.’ In this second sentence there are two participants: ‘the man’ and ‘the bear.’ The participants are the same in the two sentences, but their roles are very different.
In ‘The man caught the bear,’ the participant doing the action is ‘the man,’ while the participant undergoing the action is ‘the bear.’ These roles are reversed in ‘The bear caught the man.’
The standard name for the role of the participant doing the action is agent. The standard name for the role of the participant undergoing the action is patient:
The man caught the bear. The bear caught the man. AGENT PATIENT AGENT PATIENT
In English, we know who is doing what to whom by the order of the words in the sentence: the agent in basic sentences like these is the subject and comes before the verb, while the patient is the direct object and comes after the verb. In some English sentences the patient can be the subject of the sentence and come before the verb. Take a minute now and try to think of a sentence like this.
If you can’t think of one, go back and review §31 and try to think of one again.
If you thought of a passive sentence, you are right! ‘The man caught the bear’ is said to be in the active voice. Here is the passive voice version of that sentence:
The bear was caught by the man. PATIENT AGENT
In this sentence ‘the bear’ is the subject and the patient. The agent in this sentence is the object of the preposition ‘by.’ The passive voice is a way to focus attention on the participant undergoing the action. It does this by making the patient the subject.
As it happens, there is a wide variety of ways that languages around the world indicate participants and who is doing what to whom. You have already seen in §31 how the passive works in Klallam. You should definitely review that section now.
In this section you will learn more about how participants are indicated in Klallam. In particular you will learn that, in addition to an active voice and a passive voice, Klallam also has a middle voice.
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12018-07-28T12:43:11-07:00Montler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a94174910144.1. Agents and patients4plain2021-07-16T13:28:47-07:00Montler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a941749101
12018-07-28T12:43:24-07:00Montler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a94174910144.2. Middle with both agent and patient4plain2023-01-23T07:03:33-08:00Montler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a941749101
12018-07-28T12:43:36-07:00Montler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a94174910144.3. Middle with just one participant4plain2022-03-08T09:19:29-08:00Montler, et al.1985d2520fc8efde4c2f92342f62d9a941749101