What methods do languages use to re-introduce the subject of a passive construction?

Question

In German and Spanish (I think), you use the word for 'from'. In Japanese though, I think they use 'ni' (which can either mean 'to' or 'at'). In English we use the preposition 'by', which is rarely used for anything other than passives. Though it can have a locative meaning, which is what I think was its original meaning.

Are there other ways languages do this? To me, improvising with another preposition can potentially cause ambiguity issues. At least in English, if two 'by's would appear in a sentence, we can replace one with 'next to'. I.e:

*"It was put by the fridge by Bob" "It was put next to the fridge by Bob"

In German though, I don't know what you would do. As far as I know, they don't have another preposition they can use to mean 'von/from'. And of course 'von' is far more commonly used than 'by' in English. And Japanese 'ni' is even more commonly used than that! Really the only two things we express exclusively with 'by' is the agent of a passive construction, and the author of a book.

What are some other ways that languages use? I'd prefer answers from languages from different families. Languages that are related to each other are of course more likely to use the same tactic than languages that aren't (its probably why most European languages use the word for 'from').

Answer 1

In French, par ('by') and de ('from/of') can be used depending on the verb. In Late Archaic Chinese, the more common passive construction that includes the agent was jian + main verb + yu + agent. The morpheme yu normally marks the locative, so it's somewhat similar to the Japanese example you mentioned.

In both of these, and the examples you mention, the agent is marked as oblique. However, there are constructions where this isn't the case.

In Early Middle Chinese, a new kind of passive was innovated that uses a strategy you haven't mentioned:

為  王    所  殺
Wei wang suo sha
COP king SUO kill
'was killed by the king' (Records of the Grand Historian)

This strategy is interesting because it's not 'prepositional' like the ones you mentioned. Wang suo sha alone is means 'he whom the king killed'. You can consider this structure a patient nominalisation or a headless object relative clause; either way, the agent is expressed as part of this nominal phrase. So 'literally', the VP translates to 'was a person whom the king killed'.

In modern Chinese, this is the construction we use. It is attested since Late Archaic Chinese, but without the agent; the agent only appeared around Middle Chinese:

我  被   他  看  見   了
Wo  bei ta  kan jian le
1sg BEI 3sg look see SFP
'I was seen by him'

Although people these days often gloss bei as 'by', this isn't completely accurate because bei didn't grammaticalise from a preposition; its original meaning was undergo. For example, bei sha would mean 'undergo killing' (i.e. get killed). The agent was just put between bei and the main verb sometime in Middle Chinese (why this happened, I'm not sure). I'm not sure what you'd call this strategy; you could say it's unmarked, since people just inserted the agent there.

PS You might want to look up how it works in Austronesian languages - that would be really exciting! It's a pretty complicated phenomenon, so considering that I'm not well-read in it, I won't post anything about it - perhaps others could!

EDIT: I just looked up Keenan and Dryer's chapter in Language typology and syntactic description. I found these:

In Haya, the agent is just unmarked, like the modern Chinese example I mentioned:

Ebitooke bí-ka-cumb-w’       ómukâzi
bananas  they-past-cook-pass woman
'The bananas were cooked by the woman'

In some languages, the agent is incorporated into the verb. Keenan and Dryer cite English examples like 'this project is state-controlled', and mention that this process is more productive in Quechua:

Kuru miku-sqa-mi       manzana-ø  ka-rqa-n
bug  eat-ptcpl-comment apple-subj be-past-3
'The apple was bug eaten'

Answer 2

In German you can either use von (actor) or durch (agent) for the actor, so your premise is wrong. Still, German speakers mostly rely on word order to determine the actor.

Die Kiste wurde von einer Windböe von der Ladefläche geworfen. (preferred)

Die Kiste wurde durch eine Windböe von der Ladefläche geworfen.

The crate has been thrown from the truck bed by a wind gust.

But of course there are still cases with ambiguity:

Die Kiste wurde durch ein Missgeschick durch/von eine/einer Windböe von der Ladefläche geworfen.

The crate has been thrown from the truck bed by a wind gust by accident.