A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 87The Japanese facts parallel the Georgian ones in that both the causer and
the causee can control the reflexive possessor. The adversative passive is
illustrated in (76); it has the significant property that it applies to intransi
tive verbs and has no active counterpart. The argument that would be the
pivot of the corresponding "plain" construction (in this case, "Mary became
bedridden in self's house") is marked by the postposition ni.
(76) John wa Mary ni zibun no uti de nekom-(r)are-ta.
TOP DAT self GEN house in become.sick-pASS-PAST
"John; was affected by Marvis becoming bedridden in self¿ j's
house."The non-adversative passive construction is exemplified in (77). In it the
actor appears as a peripheral oblique marked by ni, if at all, and the under-
goer of the verb appears as pivot (marked by ga or as an LDP phrase
marked by wa "topic".
(77) Mary wa John ni zibun no uti de koros-(r)are-ta.
TOP DAT Self GEN house in kill-PASS-PAST
"Marvj was killed by Johnj in selfj *j's house."
As in Georgian, the peripheral passive actor cannot control the reflexive
pronoun, and this is all the more striking in Japanese, because the "passive
agent" is marked by ni in both the adversative and plain passives, and yet it
can still be a controller in the adversative construction but not the plain
one. The situation is exactly the same as in Georgian, however: the plain
passive involves the non-canonical syntactic coding of the argument,
whereas the causative and adversative passive constructions entail the non-
canonical lexical coding of it but it remains a core argument. The explana
tion for the causative construction in (75) is identical to that for the Geor
gian causative in (72) and need not be repeated. In the adversative passive
construction, the single argument of the intransitive verb should be pivot
and reflexive controller but is preempted from its assignment to the appro
priate macrorole because of the construction in which it occurs. The argu
ment is, however, still a core argument, and, like the causee in a causative
construction, it is still a potential pivot; hence it can still function as a
reflexive controller. In a regular passive, on the other hand, the highest
ranking argument is assigned actor status, but the actor is coded as an
optional peripheral element. As an oblique peripheral element it lacks all
of the pivot properties it would have as a direct argument in the core, the
PCS or the LDP.