On the distribution of passive and antipassive constructions in universal grammar

The distribution of passive and antipassive constructions in a number of language is examined. The discussion focuses on promotional passives and antipassives of the kind found in German and Dyirbal, respectively. Two accusative languages, German and Choctaw, and two ergative languages, Dyirbal and Enga, are surveyed, and Choctaw and Enga are found to lack constructions of the type found in the other two languages. It is argued that this is related to a fundamental difference in the nature of the grammatical processes in the two groups of languages, and a distinction between role-dominated and reference-dominated languages is proposed to capture this difference.