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A Non-Passive Markedness Process in Persian a Functional Sentence Perspective Approach Mohammad Jafar JABBARI

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A Non-Passive Markedness Process in Persian a Functional Sentence Perspective Approach Mohammad Jafar JABBARI Global Research Journal of Education Vol. 2(2) pp.023 – 029 December 2012 Available online http://www.globalresearchjournals.org/?a=journal&id=gjer Copyright ©2012 Global Research Journals Full Length Research. A Non-passive Markedness Process in Persian A Functional Sentence Perspective Approach Mohammad Jafar JABBARI Department of English, Yasouj University, Yasouj, Iran E-mail: [email protected] Accepted 20 th October 2012 In Persian, agentive passive sentences are not formed normally and frequently. The passive voice is used only when the doer of the action is not present for any reason. On the other hand, in Persian, unlike English and many other European languages, case is assigned to NPs overtly and by affixation. This article aims to find the correlation between case assignment and passive formation, to discover the reason(s) behind the absence of agentive passive structure in Persian, and to introduce a well-formed alternative for agentive passive sentences, within the framework of Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP). Key Words : Aagentive passive voice, Markedness, FSP,Theme and Rheme. 1. Introduction produced in Persian and d) introduce an alternative markedness process for marking Persian sentences While agentive passive sentences are formed naturally and frequently in English, they, according to many 2. Review of the Related Literature Persian grammarians, are not naturally and frequently produced in Persian. The passive voice is used only 2.1 Case Theory when the doer of the action is not mentioned for any Case is an “inflectional category, basically of nouns, reason. On the other hand, while in English and some which typically marks their role in relation to other parts of European languages, case is determined syntactically, in the sentence" Matthews (2007). In other words, it is “a Persian, it is assigned morphologically. Analyzing the grammatical category that shows the function of the noun markedness process of passivization within the or noun phrase in a sentence" (Richards and Schmidt, Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) approach, and 2002). elaborating the above-named two different ways of case Among the most frequently distinguished cases are assignment, this article intends: a) introduce such nominative, accusative and dative, respectively assigned concepts as case assignment, markedness, etc., b) find to the subject, the direct object and the indirect object or the correlation between these concept, c) discover the object of preposition. Case assignment in sentences with reason(s) why agentive passive sentences are not different numbers of NP arguments is illustrated in the following table: (1) Subject Verb DO IO/OP NOMINATIVE ACCUSATIVE DATIVE a Maryam went - - b Zhaleh invited Maryam - c Jamshid gave the flowers to Maryam 024 Glo. J. Edu. Res. The NP Maryam in (1a), (1b) and (1c) has nominative, 1981). From this viewpoint, an active sentence and its accusative and dative case respectively, while they, lacking corresponding passive one, though identical in the basic case endings, are equal in form. Case Theory goes far meaning, are uttered in two different situations and cannot beyond case endings of nouns. "It deals not just with case be interchangeably used. In other words, they are suitable forms visible in the surface sentence but with 'abstract' answers to two different questions. For example (2 repeated Case."(Cook and Newson, 1997). For some scholars case as 4b) is a suitable answer to (4a): assignment is a language universal. Chomsky (1986a) maintains that "every phonetically realized NP must be (4) a. What did Maryam eat? assigned (abstract) case." For Cook and Newson (1997), b. Maryam ate the cake. "abstract case is an important element in the syntax even when it does not appear in the surface. The fact that Maryam Sentence (3, repeated as 5b) is, however, a felicitous lacks any visible case ending in the above examples, does answer to the totally different question (5a): not mean that it lacks case. While case is a universal (5) a. By who(m) was the cake eaten? concept, case assignment processes is language-specific. b. The cake was eaten by Maryam. Case assignment differences in English and Persian will be elaborated in due course. Sentences (4b) and (5b), are grammatical, acceptable and semantically equal. They, nevertheless,are not felicitous 2.2. Voice answers to (4a) and (5a) respectively: Voice is a linguistic category which indicates whether the surface subject of a sentence is the performer of the action (6) a. What did Maryam eat? or is acted upon. Trask (2007) defines voice as “the b. ? The cake was eaten by Maryam. grammatical category governing the way the subject of a sentence is related to the action of the verb. In other words, (7) a. By who(m) was the cake eaten? voice is “the way in which a language expresses the b. ? Maryam ate the cake. relationship between a verb and the noun phrases which are associated with it” (Richards and Schmidt 2002). FSP describes how information is distributed in In many languages the most familiar voice contrast is that sentences: a sentence conveys two types of information, between active and passive constructions. “A verb is in the namely old (given) and new information. The old information, active voice when the subject of the verb actually performs referred to as theme , is that knowledge which the speaker the action indicated by the verb….. A verb is in the passive assumes to share with the addressee. Theme is “the starting voice when it expresses an action performed upon its point of utterance” (Mathesius, 1942), or it is “the point of subject” (Shaw, 1986). In other words, passive is "a departure for what the speaker is going to say" construction in which an intrinsically transitive verb is (Halliday,1985). The new information, referred to as rheme , construed in such a way that its underlying object appears is what the speaker states about, or in regard to, the theme. as its surface subject" (Trask, 1993). Two sentences can be In other words, rheme is "everything else that follows in the different in voice and yet convey the same basic meaning. sentence" (Brown and Yule, 1989). In still other words, Consider the two sentences (2) and (3): rheme is the information that the speaker assumes not to be (2) Maryam ate the cake. inferable by the addressee from the text. Theme is the (3) The cake was eaten by Maryam. information repeated in both the question and the answer, and what appears only in the answer is rheme. Sentence (2) is an active sentence. Sentence (3) is the corresponding passive of the active sentence (2). They are (8) equal in the basic meaning. If (2) and (3) are equal in the basic meaning, then in what they do differ and why should two semantically identical Theme Rheme sentences be formed? Different linguistic approaches may give different answers to these questions. The Functional a. What did Maryam eat ? b. Maryam ate the cake. Sentence Perspective (FSP) has a pragmatic answer to this question. 2.3. Functional Sentence Perspective (9) The Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) is a type of analysis associated with the Prague School of linguistics Theme Rheme which studies the sentence in terms of the part its elements play in communication. According to FSP "the structure of a. By who(m) was the cake b. The cake was eaten utterances is determined by the use to which they are put eaten ? Maryam and the communicative context in which they occur" (Lyons, Jabbari 025 In (8b), Maryam ate , repeated in both the question and the 2.5.1 Formal Difference answer, is the theme and the cake, which appears only in A translation of sentence (2) into Persian, can be of help in the answer, is the rheme. It can be concluded that, the short comparing passive voice in Persian and English : answer to a wh-question is the rheme but the complete (10) /mærjæm kejK-ra xord/ answer contains both theme and rheme. By the same token, Maryam the cake-ACCmarker ate in (9b), The cake was eaten is the theme and (by) Maryam is the rheme. Thus, according to FSP, an active sentence and Passive sentences in Persian, like English (and many other its corresponding passive sentence differ with regard to the languages), are formed with passive auxiliary and passive theme-rheme distribution: what is the theme in an active participle. Sentence (11) is an example of a Persian passive sentence can be (totally or partially) the rheme in the sentence : corresponding passive sentence and vice-versa. ( 11) / kejk xord-e ʃod / 2.4. Markedness the cake eaten became A linguistic form is said to be marked if it is " less central or less natural than a competing one (unmarked form) on any (11) is a translation of the following English passive of various grounds, such as lower frequency, more limited sentence (12): distribution, more overt morphological marking, greater semantic specificity or greater rarity in languages generally" (12) The cake was eaten. (Trask 1993). Thus, “a passive sentence like Janet was arrested by the police is marked with respect to the active Such passive structures as (12), in which the agent is not The police arrested Janet, since the passive contains more included, are called “agent-less” or “short” passive material, has a more complex structure, and is rarer than the sentences. Passive sentences, which do include the agent active”(Trask, 2007). or doer of the action, as (3), are referred to as “agentive” or The markedness of a sentence can be determined by its “long” passive sentences. While an agentive passive word order. Richards and Schmidt (2002) introduce the conveys the same amount of information as its Markednss Theory as: corresponding active sentence, in an agent-less passive in languages of the world certain linguistic sentence one constituent, i.e the agentive PP ( by phrase in elements are more basic, natural, and frequent English), and consequently one piece of information (i.e.
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