The problem of 'symmetric voice' in Austronesian
Paul Kroeger
(Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics and SIL Intl.)
Passives by definition involve the demotion of the agent to oblique or
adjunct status. Anti-passives by definition involve the demotion of the
patient. Both of these are detransitivizing operations. "Symmetric
voice" is a term that has been introduced into Austronesian linguistics
to describe alternations in which a new subject is selected but nothing
gets demoted; that is, alternations in which there is no change in the
transitivity of the clause. Such systems are somewhat difficult to
account for within most formal syntactic frameworks. Symmetric voice is
one of a cluster of unusual features which characterize the
"Philippine-type" languages. Other features include multiple voice
categories (four or more); extraction limited to subjects only;
long-distance extraction possible only out of sentential subjects;
requirements that subject NPs must be definite; and a preference for
patients to be selected as subject rather than agents.
A recent UCLA dissertation by Matt Pearson proposes a Minimalist
analysis of Malagasy voice as A-bar movement, essentially a kind of
pragmatically bleached topicalization. This proposal has been quite
influential because it provides a unified account for several of the
most unique and puzzling features of Philippine-type systems, and does
so in terms of patterns that are familiar from other languages.
However, Pearson's analysis also seems to predict that these properties
should come in a bundle; if a language is found to have symmetric voice
it should be expected to have all or most of the other properties as
well. Using data from Balinese and Indonesian, I will show that this is
not in fact what we find, and argue that the independent variability of
these properties provides a reason to reject Pearson's hypothesis. In
doing so I will argue in favor of a somewhat more traditional view which
takes symmetric voice alternations to be instances of "A movement", that
is, true changes in grammatical relations.
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