Passives, impersonals and Voice in Sakha

Abstract

Previous studies on Sakha have diverged on whether to analyze its passives and impersonals as syntactically distinct constructions or not. In this paper, we report a novel variety of Sakha which behaves differently from those recorded in the literature with regard to its passives and impersonals. We argue that in this Sakha variety, the impersonal should be analyzed as an active construction with a null impersonal pronoun, rather than a passive construction. We also discuss the implications of the findings for theories of passives and the typology of Voice.