Passive Construction in Basketo

Abstract

This paper deals with the passive construction in Basketo, a North Omotic language predominantly spoken in Basketo Special Woreda in Southern Nation Nationalities and Peoples Regional State, Ethiopia. The passive suffix - int- is also morphologically involved in reciprocal, reflexive, and spontaneous constructions. So, it can be regarded as a valency-reducing suffix having a de-transitivizing effect on the transitive. From the viewpoint of information structure, the passive construction is a strategy foregrounding the patient while backgrounding the agent. For this effect, OSV word order is used because the initial noun phrase of a sentence becomes a topic. On the other hand, in the interpretation of sentences with trivalent verbs, the noun phrase immediately preceding the verb is taken as focus. If this noun phrase is marked by instrumental (comitative) case -bara, the morpheme -int- of derived, verb stems must be interpreted as reciprocal, if accusative case (object), then passive. The passive form is also used in resultative constructions of telic verbs, i.e. those referring to a state that has happened as the result of a previous event. The object of the previous event is promoted to nominative, and the verbal noun of the derived verb stem with-int- is followed by the present auxiliary verb woɗe ‘exist’. Finally, the impersonal passive expresses a state of habitual or generic activity.