Paper short abstract:

We compare the passive, potential and spontaneous clitic -(r)are- in Japanese with the middle voice clitic se in Spanish. The common character between them is that both have developed passive and potential constructions from the spontaneous meaning.

Paper long abstract:

We compare the passive, potential and spontaneous clitic -(r)are- in Japanese with the middle voice clitic se in Spanish focusing on the animacy of the subject and the agent's implicature. The common character between the voice system of -(r)are- and se is that both have developed passive and potential constructions from the spontaneous meaning.

-(R)are- is said to be formed by reanalyzing the inflection of spontaneous intransitive verbs and has, mainly, the following constructions in Early Middle Japanese (EMJ); Animate Subject Passive, Non-volitional, Impossible, and only a few Inanimate Subject Passive constructions (Kawamura 2013). On the other hand, Spanish se has Reflexive, Ergative (Spontaneous), Potential-Passive, Inanimate Passive and Impersonal (Sánchez López 2002). It has no Animate Passive.

We believe that the EMJ had few Inanimate Passive because it developed mainly Non-volitional and Impossible constructions in the range where Spanish developed Inanimate Passive, while Spanish has Reflexive construction in the range of Animate Passive.

Now in Contemporary Japanese (CJ), while the Non-volitional construction is limited to particular kinds of psychological verbs and Potential/ Impossible constructions are transferring to the new Potential construction with clitic -(r)e- (such as tabe-re-ru, kak-e-ru), the system of -(r)are- is shifting to the passive exclusive. Consequently, it has many Animate and Inanimate Passive types which EMJ did not have.

We compare the voice system of these three languages using original figures, which indicate whether the subject is animate or not, and whether the agent is implicit or not.

Reference

Kawamura, Futoshi (2013) Raru kei jutugobun-no kenkyu. Tokyo: Kuroshio Publisher.

Sánchez López, Cristina. (ed.) (2002) Las construcciones con se. Madrid: Visor Libros.