Axel Holvoet
Vilnius University
Antipassive
reflexives in Latvian
The
article deals with antipassive reflexives in Latvian, with side glances at
other Baltic and Slavonic languages. The purpose of the article is to locate
antipassive reflexives in the semantic space of reflexives and middles by
establishing their mutual relationships and their conceptual and diachronic
links to other types of reflexive-marked middles. Two types of antipassive
reflexives already identified in the literature, viz. deobjectives and
deaccusatives, are discussed. First, deobjectives are set apart from metonymic
reflexives. Then the relationship between deobjectives and deaccusatives is
discussed: deobjective constructions, which suppress the object, encode
decreased prominence of the patient, whereas deaccusatives, which substitute
oblique (prepositional) marking for direct object marking, encode decreased
affectedness and atelicization. A further type is also introduced that has not
hitherto been identified in the literature, the ‘deagentive-deaccusative’ type.
With antipassive reflexives it shares the oblique marking of the object but it
differs from them by a shift of subjecthood from the agent to a theme/medium
argument; in this respect, they resemble anticausatives.
Keywords: antipassive,
reflexive, deobjective, deaccusative, Latvian, Lithuanian