Christina L. Truong
Paper presented at Workshop on Austronesian voice and related phenomena, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 26 November 2019.
In this paper, I investigate the extent to which western Indonesian verbal suffixes involved in applicative constructions also perform non-applicative and non-valency increasing functions. I survey forms and functions of applicative morphology in a sample of western Indonesian languages of different types of voice systems, including Karo Batak, Sundanese, Pendau, Balantak, Tukang Besi.
A number of observations emerge from the study. First, the properties of a base are not sufficient to predict which which affix it will combine with, nor what the resultant meaning will be. Thus the constructions are not purely compositional. Second, the function of these affixes cannot be equated with bringing a participant from the periphery of a clause into the core in many cases. In some applicative constructions, the applied object is not a participant in the event, e.g. purpose applied objects. In other cases, no applied object with a peripheral role is present, as in many non-valency-increasing constructions. Furthermore, for many derived verbs, there is no base clause to speak of, and thus no peripheral roles can be identified. A satisfactory analysis of the so-called “applicative affixes” must take into account their non-applicative functions.
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