Abstract

SUNER, Avel·lina. DIATHESIS OF PARTICIPLES IN ABSOLUTE CONSTRUCTIONS: MICROVARIATION IN WRITTEN PRODUCTIONS OF SEMI-CULTURED PEOPLE. Lingüística [online]. 2013, vol.29, n.2, pp.51-91. ISSN 2079-312X.

Being characteristic of cultured written language, absolute constructions are often believed to have a time-stable internal structure without presenting diatopic variation. This assumption is accurate with regard to cultured written language, which is subject, by definition, to normative pressure, literary tradition and correct text models. In less formal registers, however, absolute constructions present alternations. In this article, we focus on one of the aspects which present fluctuation: diathesis of absolute participles derived from transitive verbs. In spite of them being prototypically passive in cultured written language, one can frequently observe in less carefully written texts some active voice features, such as differential case marking or lack of gender and number agreement between the participle and its internal argument. Some of these phenomena are not a passing fashion of this kind of register but have existed for a long time. The analysis of absolute constructions in written productions of semicultured people allows to support the idea that passive meaning - as well as its active counterpart - should be considered not as a monolithic phenomenon but as interpretations gradually built from a series of linguistic behaviours which converge in cultured registers of Spanish so as to create a passive meaning but may generate in other kinds of texts structures which are not prototypically passive.

Keywords : absolute participle; transitivity; voice; differential object marking; agreement.

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