Passivization in Mbere

Abstract

This paper is about the syntactic examination of passivization in Mbere. The analysis is approached following Chomsky’s Government and Binding theory (GBT). It comes out that Mbere passivization is implemented by moving the direct object argument from its logical position to the phonetic form. Yet, the change of word order does not imply the insertion of auxiliary verb and the morphological change of the verb stem, but it implies the substitution of the overt NP object by a pronominal which is co-indexed to the moved object. This causes the violation of Chomsky’s impenetrability condition, the condition B of binding theory and the copy theory of movement. In this connection, Mbere passivation shows promotion and demotion as principles of world languages passivization and insertion and substitution as parametric of variations or language idiosyncratic. Therefore, except the existing insertion, promotion and demotion, Mbere provides the new property of passivization which is substitution.