61 62

"If we refuse to consider and interpret the surprising

facts of device, design and performance inberent in the
words of the texts, tbe Indians wbo made the texts, and
those who preserved what they made, will have worked in
va in" ( De 11 Hyme s, 1981: 5).
One ot the striking featUres ot textual materials in Shuswap
and other Interior Salish languages is the trequent use ot
passive voice constructions in these narratives. As with
Passive and Agency in Shuswap Narrative Discourse other languages that allow tor passive constructions, the
Shuswap passive is an optional grammatical device. Sherzer
(1987) has shown that optional grammatical categories as they
by are used in discourse, whether it Is verbal dueling, poetry,
political rhetoric, or myths and legends, Illuminate the
Marianne Boelscher relationship between language and culture. Discourse, Sherzer
notes, Is an embodiment and transmitter of culture, but also
Simon Fraser University/Secwepemc Cultural -Education Society an embodiment ot language: "Grammar provides a set of
potentials. Since these potentials are actualized in
discourse, they can only be studied in discourse" (Sherzer
1987:307). Therefore, tbe full meaning ot grammatical forms
only emerges when studied in discourse, that is, in their
social and cultUral context.
As I will sbow in this paper, the Shuswap use ot the
passive in oral narrative as an optional device combines a
grammatical and semantic function with a poetic and cultural
one. Its use in narrative discourse must be explained in
relation to extrali~guistic criteria, and must be related not
only to the textual but also to the cultural context. ,)
Shuswap or Secwepemc is one of the Interior Salish
languages spoken among native people of the British Columbia
,.
~,
Interior Plateau. It bears close resemblance to the
neighbouring Interior Salish languages, i.e. Nlakapmx or
Thompson (75% cognates), Lillooet and Okanagan, and is less
closely related to the Salish languages ot the Columbia
Plateau. Kinkade (1976) and Thompson (1979a) have described
and compared the areal features of Salishan languages,
including categories of control and non-control (Thompson
(1979:136b) and passives. The latter appear as both
agent less passives and passives wbere both agent and patient
are indicated (op.cit.:140-41).
The occurences of passive voice constructions analysed
below were taken from narratives. Hence, they are not
elicited forms, but they occurred in the context of
discourse. They invariably feature third person singular
passives, by far the most frequent passive constructions
occurlng in natural speecb. Like most passives, the passive
constructions used here can be converted into corresponding
active voice constructions through elicitation. However, the
point I will be raising in this paper regards not so much
"What is said", but "how and why" certain utterances are
produced.
63 64

Passive constructions in Shuswap are formed as follows: focus switches to coyote, and is maintained on his until the
Verb-stem + transitivizer + passive suffix. Transltlvlzers end through the passive construction, "He was tricked by his
can be simple ones (Inti; It/), causative ones Ist/;/ntes/, brother. The two passive constructions in\1.Olved thus also
or those Implying direct affectedness Iminsl or Involuntary add an element of symmetry to the story.
or accidental action I(n)went/, they can also be further
combined with other affixes, such as reciprocals Iwecwt/, Another example of this kind is the first sentence of
beneficatives Ic/; Icit/. Since most verb stems can be Example #2, Coyote and Fox's wife, a story I recorded with
transitivized in this way to form a derived meaning, most Ida William of the North Thompson Band. This story, again,
verbs can be turned into passive forms. revolves around Fox, along with his Wife, travelling with
Examples are: Coyote: Coyote wants to run off with Fox's wife, but Fox
kltsc~ to arrive kitscens = he takes someone to. a place catches them and beats up Coyote. The story unfolds with Fox
~um = to break wind - ~ent~s = to break wind on -s."O. wanting to set out, but Coyote wanting to stay on Iwith Fox's
~ulem- to make - i~lctmes - she had It made for her wife, which is rendered as:
qwets~ts = to set out qwets6tstem = he is taken somewhere
Example #2:
It should also be noted that most transitive Or transitivized
verbs which appear in passives are derived from strong Ta7 k sk~lnmentem t~ senxw~xwlucw.
control roots Thompson 1979b). NEG ART+NOM+listen-PASS ART coyote
"He (Fox) wasn't listened to by coyote"
1. The Passive as a Focusing Device:
Keenan (1987) has discussed the primary function of the which maintains the focus of this portion of the story on
passive as a "foregroundlng operation", allowing the speaker fox.
to draw attention to an element in a sentence. In this
sense, passives are similar to topical.lzations (e.g. BEANS is 2. Perspective and Control
what I like) or left-dislocations, both of which are options In addition to marking focus, however, the narrator's use of
of Shuswap syntax. As we will see below, "foregrounding" or the passive provides a way of identifying with, or
"focusing" is Indeed one of the poetiC or stylistic functions narrating, a story from the POINT OF VIEW of the protagonist,
of the Shuswap passive. However, while toplcalizatlons and to whom something happens. As Keenan (1987:268) has noted,
left-dislocations operate at the syntactic level, passive "the subject of a passive Is never less affected by the
constructions operate at the Verb-Predicate level. action than when it is presented as the object of an active
Kuipers has drawn attention to the function of the transitive verb". In other words, the passive combines
Shuswap passive in narrative as "focusing". For instance, focusing with affectedness or "not being in control" of the
Example #1 is taken from a short story Kuipers recorded from situation. The protagonist who is emphasized Is subjected to
David Johnson of Alkali Lake. The entire story translates something. Sentences 2-5 of the story about Coyote and Fox's
literally as follows (Kuipers 1974:92): wife illuminate this aspect: The reason Coyote won't listen
"Fox met Coyote. He (Fox) was eating skimmings. He (Fox) to fox is that he wants to be with Fox's wife and run off
was told by his brotb.er, 'Where did you get that?' Fox said with her. The focus then switches to the woman: She had tied
to him, 'Oh, you can find them over there, in the well, i~ a ribbon around her jowls to look younger (the pack-rat's
you lean over, that's where it is, that's where I get· it. version of a face-lift!). Focusing on the woman, the story
Coyote set out, leaned over, there were skimmings on the continues: the woman was told/wanted to be embraced, but she
bottom. But really it was the reflection of the moon that was didn't listen, or in other words: "He wanted to put his arms
visible there. He jumped and plunged in. He thought It was around her but she didn't want him to." What happens here is
skimmings. He was tricked by his brother. that the sensation of the threat of a forced embrace is
Exam!,le #1: (Kui!,ers o p . c i t . ) . , related from the woman's perspective. Similar, in the next
m-ts~ntmes t'e uqt.ls, the7e k-tskwencwes?' sentence, which gives the reason why she didn't want to be
PAST-tell-PASS.ART. brother-POSS. where hyp.ART you-get embraced.: "She was afraid that she would be subjected to him
feeling wbere she had tied it on her back." After fox catches
Of the sentence in #1, Kuipers notes that "coyote speaks to up to tbem, the focus changes back to coyote as the sufferer:
Fox, but the focus of the preceding sentence (fox) is "He was caught up by hi s brot her, was beat en and had the
maintained by using a passive form, of which fox is the woman taken away from him."
subject." In other words, the passive maintains the focus on
a particular character, even though another character , ., t'
N~xwenxw ts~ntem re stukwentem, ta7 k skelnmens.
intercedes by acting. The first half of the story is focused woman tell+Pass ART embrace+PASS NEG ART listen-sbe
on fox; however, with the sentence, "coyote set out ... ", the "The woman was told to be embraced, but she didn't listen.

-7.-
 65 66

i.e. "He wanted to put his arms around her, but she didn't "Some of them were killed there"
listen"
KJlctmes t'e t~des cw1!t (e st'1ltsu7
Nex~11 resowmusentwdrltem t'he7n re tsrats t'e tekmt'kens make-for+PASS ART aunt+POSS many ART shoes
afraid PART feel+TRANS+REC+PASS where ART tie-she ART back "her aunt made many shoes for her" (so the girl could escape
"She was afraid that he would feel where she nad tied It on her captors)
her back"
I • m-s'wentmes tie k?es~ltktens
Kit stant mes t e ~q~iSt p~lstem, PAST+ask+PASS ART relatlve+POSS
reach+PASS ART Brother+POSS, beat+PASS "She was asked by her relatives" (how she managed to escape)
"He was caught up by his brother, was beaten,"
Thompson and others have drawn attention to the notion of
m-kwect mes n~xwenxw f'e r i 7
t'e control In Interior Salish languages, mainly through
PAST+take+forPASS ART woman there. suffixing and transltlvlzlng, and th~ough a limited set of
"He had the woman taken away from him. non-control verbal roots. I think the optional use of the
passive, at the level of the verb-phrase Is an additional
Another good example is #3, told by Louisa Basil of device for marking control, by focusing on the non-control or
Bonaparte. It Is extracted from a spetekwll (story) about a patient-status ot the grammatical subject ot the passive
~: .
supernatural skunk In Pavilion Lake (Npetkwe7ten), whose phrase.
smell was so strong that It could kill humans. When the
skunk was killed by coyote and released It~ scent 3. Cultural Aspects of Control and Causation:
Into the lake, the lake turned a peculiar dark-blue colour. As tar as the notion ot passivity, causation and control Is
concerned, It Is useful to move to the extralinguistic
Example #3 The People at Upper Hat Creek and Skunk context. In other words, what are the cultural Implications
, ) I , of agency, or the cultural conventions guiding the pointing
Nexell re~ 5pentem meT qwtseqes out ot control. In Example #1, the Coyote and Fox story, the
afraid PART iart+PASS FUT die-happen sentence "He was told by his brother, 'Where did you get
"They were afraid they would be farted on, and would die" that'", Is pivotal fo the untolding of the story. This Is
because of the implied or alluded content, I.e. the cultural
The above gives a different emphasis and perspective on the message underlying It. First of all, in being addressed as
story as the corresponding active voice construction Coyote's brother, Fox can't refuse him, but must share his
nllxII11 1111 spuTa, "they we,'e afraid ot his tartlng", since the food and knowledge with him. Moreover, "he was told by his
"J. agency of the skunk is related from the point of view of the brother" indicates Coyote pressing him into action. In a
affected patient. cultural context, Fox being told by somewhone who is his
brother "where did you get that" Implies, "hey, give me some
A final example of the combination of perspective and of that!"
non-control Is
#4, also recorded from Ida William of the North Thompson While the above examples Include an agent, agent less
Band: passives are, in fact, the more frequent ones and sometimes
Example #4 Tessie: This Is from the narration about a young have Intricate Implied or alluded meanings. "If there Is any
Shuswap woman who was kidnapped by the Blackfoot Indians, one tunction that is common to the passive in all the
taken to their country, and eventually escaped. It Is told languages that are customarily said to have a passive voice,
entirely from her perspective by the protagonist's great- this is that it makes possible the construction of agent less
granddaughter, Mrs. Ida William. sentences," Lyons (1968:378) noted. While passive
constructions - as opposed to the middle - ~ imply the
existence of an agent (Keenan 1987:254), it is a particular
pel cient ~m t'e tmicws t'e kist qelm~cw ee property of agent less passive sentences that the agent goes
return+PASS ART land+POSS ART bad ART people unmentioned and is therefore only alluded to. When the agent
"They were ret~ned to the land of the bad people" (I.e. is a narrator himself, or the "I" of the story (especially in
after they were attacked by the Blackfoot, some young girls direct speech), the use of the passive draws attention away
were taken to their country) from him and is a way of communicating politeness,
, I , I ' humbleness, both culturally important values. (note tor
Tlqwentem te rlT sTITllcw example the difference between "I made it" - where the maker
klll+PASS ART there some of them takes credit - and "It was made", with the implied agent "by

-'4 - -r-
67 68

me" - where the maker is too polite or humble to take credit, She will be left there in the mountains
although the implied message "by me" is understood by the
audience. MeT pl:pes re qwetset6tes (e riT t'hel!l
FUT get lost ART set out REFLEX there somewhere
Passive sentences without named agents allow to defer "She will get lost, when she wanders off somewhere
agency and accountability of action to an unspecified source
or person. Brown and Levinson (1978), as well as Lakoff Ta7 k sxwexwisteten
f
re spupelsten
'

(1971) have discussed the social functions of the use of NEG HYP. like -I ART kill-I
passive voice constructions from this point of view. For the I don't like to (don't want) to kill her
English language, Brown and Levinson note, "The passive
coupled with a rule of agent deletion is perhaps the means Put kwekwsts~t, nerl7s
e.1!L excellencein English of avoiding reference to persons just save-REFLX that's it
involving /face-threatening actions/" (op.cit.:194). They If she save's hersel f, that's it."
cite the English "get" constructions ("It got wrecked") as
phrases used to avoid the blaming of explicit others This passage indicates that the parents externalize the
including oneself. In this sense, then, the passive serves agency of leaving her and put it in the hands of
the function of de-focusing on a subject, and de- someone/something unspecified. The use of the passive voice
personalizing action "Our functional hypothesis claims that is a device which shows the parents distancing themselves
the basic motive is subject demotion and possible deletion, from control and causation as to the girl's fate. At the
and ~ object promotion" (op.cit.:274). The rationale for same time, through the use of the reflexive suffix /tsut/,
these kind of constructions are therefore social and cultural which emphasizes control over action, they emphasize that she
conventions, and they allow the speaker to avoid naming the has the chance to better herself and save herself. It is also
agent responsible for what action in a potentially noteworthy that the verb stem plep- is a (- control) active
embarassing situation (ibid.). rather than a passive.
This brings us to another instance of the use of Further on in the story, the "non-agency" of the parents
passives in Shuswap narratives, namely those that are is re-iterated when the medicine man comments on her abandon-
agentless, or rather, defer agency to unspecified sources. ment. When he notices her, he says,
Example #5 is taken from a lengthy narrative by the late
Christopher Donald sr. of the North Thompson Band. It t'e rey wits'!n pl~p-enke 1'17
involves an adolescent girl who is mute and therefore "That over there, evidently is lost"
marginal to human society. Her only sounds are like the
howling and barking of a dog, even her appearance is m-llw~lentem-enke
likewise. Her parents cannot cope with her and decide to take he/she/it was evidently abandoned.
her into the mountains to ahandon her there. This is, in
fact, an act of forced etsxem or spirit questing, but most of Therefore, in the narrative, the medicine man also defers
all, challenges her to become a self-sufficient member of the agency to other sources, rather than saying explicitly
social group or else 'perish. All she, however, does, once (although he very likely Is aware of the circumstances) who
alone, is to bark and howl like a dog, whereupon a medicine abandoned her, or "they abandoned her."
man (tekwllc) turns her Into stone. In examining the uses of
the passive voice, the interesting passage in this story This function of deferred agency is moreover an interesting
revolves around the parents' decision to abandon her: The act one in light of Scollon and Scollon's (1981) work on North
of abandonment Is expressed as a set of agentless passives. American Native narrative structure, interaction and the
This is in marked contrast to the reflexives used to social construction of reality. Using the example of
describe her action, which emphasize her causation of and Athapascan modes of communication, the authors stress that
responsibility for those actions. The passages in question maintaining the integrity of the other and maintaining
are as follows: others' (and hence one's own) face are important strategies
of interpersonal discourse (see also Boelscher 1989). I
Me7 qwets~tstem re7 st'emk~lt t'e t'he7n t'kll~ne assume that the Shuswap use of the passive, in at least some
FUT die-PASS your daughter ART where DEIeT-invisible of its aspects, functions in a similar manner.
"Your daughter will be taken somewhere out there"
In summary, I have pointed out three interconnected
Me7 llw~lentmes t'e ri7 t'e sqelt~s functions of the use of the passive in Shuswap narrative
FUT abandon-PASS ART there ART mountain discourse. They involve the focusing or foregrounding of

-" - -.,-
 69 70

pivotal characters, the emphatic perspective from the point

of view of the subject of the story, which adds non-control Hymes, Dell
to the focus. Finally, the third function adds the deferral 1981 :I.n. Va 1n 1. !..!:..llQ. !.Q. I.tll. Y.2JL...;.. ~ La
of agency from within a social and cultural context. While ~ American Ethnopoetics
all three are optional categories, and may perhaps be
considered aspects of literary style, the last one, Keenan, Edward L.
particularly, Is only understandable within the cultural 1987 'Passlve in the World's Languages." In:
context of what is said and what is meant by it. Timothy Shopen, Ed., Language Typology ~
Syntactic Description Vol.1: Clause Struc-
t ure.
Cambridge: CambrIdge UnIversity Press
Kinkade, Dale
NOTES: 1976 "Areal Features In th~ Northwest" Paper,
Northwest Coast Studies Conference, Simon
1) Field research for this paper has been carried out since Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C.
1986 and has been financially supported by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Kuipers, Aert
Secretary of State. I thank the elders, speakers and 1974 ~ Shuswap Language
translators of the North Thompson, Bonaparte and Skeetchestn The Hague: Mout on
Bands for their stories, help with translation and
Interpretation, In particular Mrs. Ida William, and the late Kuipers, Aert and May Dixon
Chris Donald and Louisa Basil, as well as Mona Jules and Ron 1974 "Preserve Your Language"
Ignace. Mimeograph: Leiden
2) For more ease with word-processing, transcriptions are Lakoif, Robin T.
here rendered in Kuipers' practical alphabet for the Shuswap 1971 "Passive Resistance", in: Papers from the
language. Icl Is an unvoiced velar fricative rendered as Ixl Seventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago
In NPA, 11 Is an unvoiced alveolar lateral fricative, Irl is Linguistic Society. Chicago.
a voiced velar fricative, Ixl Is an unvoiced uvular
fricative (see Kuipers 1974a/b). Lyons, John
~'. 1968 Introduction !.Q. Theoretical Linguistics
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Sherzer, Joel
1987 "A Discourse-Centered Approach to Language
and Culture" American Anthropologist Vol.89
No.2
Thompson, Laurence C.
1979a "Sallshan and the Northwest" In:L. Campbell
and M. Mlthun (eds.) ~ Languages ~ ~
America: Historical ~ Comparative" Assess-
~ Austin: University of Texas Press.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Thompson, Laurence C.
Boelscher, Marianne 1979b "The Control System: A Major Category in the
1989 ~ Curtain Within: Halda ~ ~ Mythical Grammar of Salishan Languages". In: Barbara
Discourse. Vancouver: University of British S. Efrat, Ed., ~ Victoria Conference Qa
Columbia Press
Northwestern Languages. Victoria: B.C.
Brown, Penelope and S.C. "Levinson Provincial Museum Heritage Record No.4
1978 Politeness: Some Universals La Language Usage
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-'t-
-f-