1. Passivisation in Semitic

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of passive voice constructions in Semitic languages, focusing on Hebrew and Aramaic, with a sideview on Arabic. ​ It examines the historical and typological aspects of passivisation that are characteristic of Semitic, including affixal and templatic voice morphology that serve as detransitivising derivations. The article focuses on the so-called nG-stem in Hebrew and tG-stem in Aramaic and explores their interaction with transitivity and valency, including the passivisation of ditransitive clauses. It points to the fuzzy boundaries between passives and other detransitivisaton strategies such as middles and anticausatives as well as stative verb classes and impersonal subject constructions. It provides a rich documentation of a wide range of agent complements. ​ The chapter also discusses the influence of language contact and the role of passive participles in expressing resultative states, notably in the history of Aramaic and its innovation of a perfect with a dative agent.