Grammaticalization and changes in argument linking: a case-study from old Logudorese Sardinian

This article explores the rise of one of the passive periphrases that became available in the transition from Latin to Romance, the facer(e)-passive, consisting of the verb facer(e) ‘do/make’ (and its variants) + the past participle of the lexical verb (e.g., fekit pettita make.PRF.3SG request.PTCPF.SG ‘(she) was asked for/requested’), attested in eleventh – thirteenth century Logudorese Sardinian texts, occurring with [± An] subjects, only in the third person singular/plural and in some tenses, the perfect (e.g. fekit), and the pluperfect (e.g. fekerat). This pattern marked perfective passives, and apparently died out in later centuries, replaced by the es(s)er ‘be’ + past participle construction and by the reflexive passive (Blasco Ferrer 1995; Cennamo 2003; 2006).