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c. *R-ar āj amimōno ko in kōrā eo.
3pl.agr-T(past) weave.intrans handicraft the.pl.nh of woman the.s
'The handicrafts were woven by the woman.'
An analysis for passives that accounts for this restriction will be proposed in section 5.5.
5.3.3.2 The semantics of agent phrases
In section 5.4, I will show that stative sentences may have agent phrases. Since this is the
case, the example sentences in this section consist of both passive and stative sentences,
as there are no differences between the semantics of an agent phrase used with a stative
verb, such as būrōrō 'be red', jepdak ' be crushed in', or mōk 'be tired', and the semantics
of that used with a passive verb.
When Marshallese speakers are asked to translate English passive sentences to
Marshallese or vice versa, they use the three prepositions interchangeably as the English
word by. However, at least in the case of jān, there appear to be semantic differences
between these three words. First jān may introduce an inanimate DP (460) and (461).
(460) Nuknuk eo a-ō e-būrōrō jān lipstick eo.
dress the.s gnr.poss-1s.gen 3s.agr-be.red from lipstick the.s
'My dress is red from the lipstick.'
(461) Oror ko r-ar deblok jān juon wa.
fence the.pl.nh 3pl.agr-T(past) pass.through from a car
'The fences were passed through by a car.'
In this sentence lipstick eo cannot be an agent, since agents must be animate. Rather the
DP following jān seems more like a causer than an agent.
The facts concerning ippān are more complicated. While ippān does not allow
inanimate DPs such as 'lipstick' (462) or 'hose' (463), it does allow inanimate DPs like
'fire' (464) and 'car' (465).
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