Voice Constructions in Yoruba

Active

The active voice consists of an agent in the subject position which performs an action on a patient (object). The following sentences are in active voice, displaying a nice subject-object-verb word order:



The following sentences contain active participles in English, which cannot be rendered as such in Yoruba. Rather, they are translated with a relative clause:



Interesting to note in the final sentence is the fact that the clause, which we would normally put elsewhere in an English sentence, appears before that to which it refers.

Auntie Passive

A simple way to look at the anti-passive is to say that the patient is removed, leaving the verb and its agent. The following sentences do this, although I am not certain if they can truly be dubbed anti-passives.



In sentence (9), but only in this sentence, a morpheme //-n// is added to the verb. Sentences (10) and (11), on the other hand, are not even grammatical. Perhaps if I had chosen some other verbs which can be used without an object, there would be more evidence of a marker (as in (9)). Sentences (12) and (13) are a little bit different, however:



These two have a reflexive or almost "middle" meaning ("I washed/dressed [myself]"). Because of this, I am not certain whether they should be classified as anti-passive, despite the fact that structurally they are identical to the other sentences. In addition, this causes me to wonder if there is an anti-passive at all in Yoruba, for if these are indeed something else, I am left with only one possible grammatical example.

Medio-passive

If the anti-passive takes away the patient, the medio-passive removes the agent, leaving behind that which is acted upon. The following sentences in English illustrate this nicely.



By looking at the more literal translations under each Yoruba sentence, a clever trick to get around the medio-passive becomes apparent. An impersonal "they" (wn) is inserted in the subject position, in effect transforming each sentence into an active structure. This also holds for participles. In addition, note that sentences (14) and (15b) bump the patient up to the beginning of the sentence (left-dislocation). These were elicited at a different time than many of the other sentences, so that may account for the variation. Clearly either order is acceptable, as evidenced by (15a) and (15b). One other difference between (14) and (15b) is the fact that the latter has an object ("...they wrote it well."). This may have something to do with the presence of the adverb. Another interesting but unrelated fact is the distinction between sentences (20a) and (20b). In the former, the cook is also the thief, but in the latter, he is merely preparing a "hot" pig. Because of the way Yoruba forms these, it is impossible to leave the sentence ambiguous, as in English.

Passive

The passive voice is generally understood to be a construction wherein the subject is acted upon (i.e. is the patient), and the agent takes a short walk to, for example, the end of a prepositional phrase. There is no passive voice in Yoruba. Believe me, I tried:



The reason for this lack of passives follows logically from the formation of the medio-passive. Because a dummy subject (impersonal "they") has already been stuck in the sentence in order to get a passive meaning, there is no place left to put the real agent when it shows up.

Impersonal and Friends

Impersonal constructions can be thought of as having either no agent or a non-specific one (c.f. wn under anti-passive). The following sentences have non-specific agents:



In the first two sentences (which were elicited at a different time than the third), the impersonal subject <&&&&&&&&> ("people") is used, whereas in (23), wn is used. Again, this sentence is ungrammatical because the verb must take an object. The word <&&&&> ("can") is inserted before the main verb, and all in all the construction is quite straightforward. The following sentences, wich do have a subject, are formed in exactly the same way.



The next group of sentences are also impersonal, but use a different construction:



Here the expletive "it" is taken care of with the word <&&&&>, which, oddly enough, means "it". Note thay sentence (27) is indeed grammatical, even though it has no object. Again sentences (28) and (32) use the impersonal "they" trick to express the passive meanings of the sentences.



The above sentences contain several interesting points. First, although they both mean essentially the same thing, there is no direct equivalent for (33). Next, (34a) is the translation I was given for "The pigs must be killed." A completely different verb has been used, and the English meaning has been altered somewhat. I put together (34b) as a possible substitute, although I did not check it with Tola. It seemed reasonable, however, that use of the impersonal "they" should work just fine in this instance.

Scratching of Head and Wrinkling of Brow

I was not certain of what to do with these final sentences, but I felt that the data should still be included:



Judging from most of these, there seems to be no real equivalent for the English "get" construction. Some meaning is lost both in (36) and (37), which need an adverb to describe the action (this works better with (36) than with (37)). The Yoruba in (38) is almost completely different from the English, as well as in (43), (45), and (46).

Let's Try to Earn Brownie Points

This sectin has nothing to do with the rest of the project, but one can never have enough extra Yoruba data. First, several contractions occurred in the data set:



and some variation:



In addition, there was one instance of serial verbs:



Also, the verb "to intoxicate" has its points of interest, for the object is inserted in the middle of it:



Finally, a bit of reduplication:



I think, however, that this is only for gerunds.

Drumroll...

In conclusion, I have found that Yoruba is rather straightforward when it comes to voice. The active holds no surprises, and there is no passive. The medio-passive cleverly cheats by using an impersonal subject, and like the rest of the impersonal constructions examined here, makes itself look remarkably like the active in structure. The question of anti-passives is still unresolved in my mind, and could probably be better examined with some different verbs.

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