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The thuuk Construction in Thai

Cholthicha Sudmuk

Abstract

The thuuk construction in Thai has been referred to as passive by many Thai linguists (Chaiyaratana 1961, Warutamasinthop 1975, Warotamasikkhadit 1963, Lekhawattana 1970, Kullavanijava 1974, Wongbaisaj 1979). I argue that the thuuk construction is not a true passive, but rather a weak unbounded dependency construction, like the "tough" construction in English. Essentially following Dalrymple and King's (2000) analysis of the English "tough" construction, I propose that the thuuk construction results from two grammatical processes: topicalization and functional control. The first grammatical function in the body of the path of the thuuk predicated is always SUBJ of the matrix verb, which comes from TOP of SCOMP, and the bottom of the path can be either an embedded object or an embedded subject. The thuuk construction in Thai is similar to the so-called `passive' constructions in Mandarin Chinese and in Japanese, which, according to Huang (1999) and Toyoshima (1996), are also weak unbounded dependencies.

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