Linking Austronesian Symmetrical Voice Languages - two LFG approaches

presented by SONJA RIESBERG, Universität zu Köln

10.30-11.30am Tuesday 15 April 2014

Oorala Lecture Theatre, UNE

As the study of western Austronesian languages has shown, many languages within this group exhibit a voice system that differs crucially from the better known active-passive/antipassive alternation. In these so-called SYMMETRICAL VOICE LANGUAGES (Himmelmann 2005; Foley 2008) the actor argument in an undergoer voice construction – unlike the passive actor – keeps its direct core status and is neither omitted, nor realised as an oblique argument.

One prototypical instance of such a symmetrical voice language is Totoli, an endangered language spoken in central Sulawesi, Indonesia (but cf. also (cf. Arka 2003 on Balinese, Musgrave 2002 on Indonesian, and Koeger 1993 on Tagalog). Totoli displays both of the following properties that can be defined for symmetrical voice languages, as illustrated in the example pair of a Totoli actor voice construction (1a) and undergoer voice construction (1b):

1.verbs carry voice morphology in all voices

2.all voices are equally transitive (i.e. the non-subject argument are not obliquely marked)


(1a)

I                       Winarno                       lalau                              mongusut          [kunjina].i                       Winarno                       RDP-lau mon

-kusut        kunji-na

PN                    Winarno                       RDP-presently AV-look for         key -3s.POSS

'Winarno is searching for his keys.'


(1b)

Kunji    itu                    lau                               kusut-i              [i                      Winarno].

key       DET      presently                       look.for-UV       PN Winarno

'Winarno is searching for the keys.'

Within current linking theories, it is not easy to account for the alternation between (1a) and (1b). For example, standard LFG assumes that an agent argument may not be associated with an object-like function. Therefore the agent is intrinsically classified as [–o] (Bresnan/Kanerva 1989, Bresnan 2001, Dalrymple 2001), a fact that would wrongly "prohibit" a construction like the Totoli undergoer voice in (1b).

Even though the possibility of agent objects has been entertained in the literature, to date only few modifications to standard LFG have been proposed that would make it possible to account for the Totoli data within the LFG framework. In this paper, I will introduce two approaches that make it possible to better account for the linking behaviour of symmetrical voice languages. Both approaches will take up and build upon the idea of "morpholexical linking", which was developed by Carrier-Duncan (1985), Sells (1998), and Musgrave (2002). The task is to find a linking mechanism that does not blur the differences between asymmetrical and symmetrical voice languages, and that succeeds in modelling symmetrical voices just as well as the regularities of the active-passive alternation of asymmetrical voice languages that are found in the overwhelming majority of the world's languages. The first approach applies the concept of underspecification, the second one makes use of different language specific parameters for symmetrical and asymmetrical languages respectively.

References

Arka, I W. (2003). Balinese Morphosyntax: A Lexical Functional Approach. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Bresnan J. (2001).Lexical Functional Syntax, Maden, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Bresnan, J. & Kanerva, J. (1989). Locative Inversion in Chicheŵa: A Case Study of Factorization in Grammar. In Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 1-50.

Carrier-Duncan, J. (1985). Linking of Thematic Roles in Derivational Word Formation. In Linguistic Inquiry, 16, 1-34.Dalrymple, M. (2001).Lexical Functional Grammar, San Diego, London, Boston, New York, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto: Academic Press.

Himmelmann, N. P. (2005a). The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar:Typological Characteristics. In A. Adelaar & N. P. Himmelmann (Eds.), The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar (pp. 110-181). London/New York: Routledge.

Kroeger, P. (1993). Phrase Structure and Grammatical Relations in Tagalog. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Musgrave, S. (2002).Non-Subject Arguments in Indonesian, PhD Thesis, The University of Melbourne.

Sells, P. (1998). The Function of Voice Markers in the Philippine Languages. In S. G. Lapointe, D. K. Brentari & P. M. Farrell (Eds.), Morphology and its Relation to Phonology and Syntax (pp. 111-137). Stanford: CSLI Publications.