Alternation ‘Mediopassive’ (Coded)

A/nom P/acc V -> P/nom V/med; The main functions of the “mediopassive” marker –b-/-p- are: a) anticausative; b) agentless passive (“quasipassive” in Geniušiene’s terms); c) stative passive; d) “middle” (alias ‘potential passive’ or ‘facilitative passive’); cf. aŋa-b-ta-n [open-MED-AOR-3SG] ‘It opened/was opened/is open/can be opened’. Two syntactic varieties of the mediopassive are a) personal (P-promoting) mediopassive (A is deleted and P is promoted); b) impersonal mediopassive (A is deleted without P being promoted). Important: the grammaticality judgments are given for personal (promotional) mediopassive (impersonal mediopassive can be in principle applied to any verb in the facilitative ('it is possible to V') sense).

Verb Meaning Verb form Basic coding frame Derived coding frame Occurs Comment # Ex.