Research – Christina L. Truong

Towards a typology of pseudo antipassives in Western Austronesian languages

Christina L. Truong & Victoria Chen

Paper presented at the 34th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 11 June 2025

While Austronesian is widely considered a hotspot for antipassive constructions, closer investigation challenges this view. Various western Austronesian languages known as the Philippine-type have been claimed to exhibit a voice system that denotes the alternation of the basic transitive with a corresponding antipassive. However, our survey of 53 representative languages spanning Taiwan and Maritime Southeast Asia reveals instead that genuine antipassives are rarely attested in western Austronesian languages when existing criteria established in the typological literature are strictly applied to the alleged antipassive construction—commonly referred to in the literature as Actor Voice. We further demonstrate how these putative antipassives form a continuum of semi-transitive constructions, characterized by a general decrease in semantic transitivity while often still featuring a patient that retains various traits of a core argument. This continuum not only enhances our understanding of how antipassive-like constructions may develop over time, but it also suggests that syntactic intransitivity is not necessarily the endpoint of discourse-driven changes that reduce clausal transitivity. Moreover, it undermines the prevalent ergative view of western Austronesian languages and lends new support to accusative and symmetrical voice analyses, both of which maintain that the typologically peculiar Austronesian system of voice alternations does not alter clausal transitivity. Austronesian pseudo-antipassives thus underscore the importance of approaching typological classifications with caution and situating language-specific analyses within the broader typological literature.

Western Austronesian Applicative Constructions: Continuity and Change in Form and Function

Christina L. Truong

Forthcoming monograph published by Brill. Publisher link.

Applicative constructions are a distinctive grammatical feature of the Austronesian languages of western Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. Applicatives in these languages show varied syntactic and semantic properties, and are closely connected to causativization, aspectual meanings, and symmetrical voice. As a result, they do not fit neatly into ‘canonincal’ patterns for applicatives. This book adopts a construction-based, typologically-grounded approach, treating applicatives as pairings of form and meaning. Data from 85 languages is analyzed systematically, combining careful description with quantitative methods and extensive use of geomapping to explore the diverse properties of applicatives in this region and their diachronic development

Discourse Topic in Austronesian Languages

Christina L. Truong

Book chapter in Topic in Discourse: Areal Overviews and Case Studies, edited by Brendon Yoder.

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This chapter provides an overview of linguistic strategies for the introduction and
maintenance of discourse topics in Austronesian languages. First, nominal reference is
discussed, including the use of zero realization, contrasts between long and short form
pronominals, and deictic markers used pronominally or as modifiers for topical referents. Second,
structural positions that may correlate with topicality of arguments in particular verbal
constructions are identified. Presentational clauses, symmetrical voice constructions, applicatives,
and serial verb constructions are discussed, as well as languages in which pronominal reference or
zero realization correlates with discourse topicality for specific types of core arguments but not
others. Third, the use of marked word order to signal special pragmatic status of a referent is
considered. Marked word order may be accompanied by use of particular prosodic cues and
discourse particles, and some constructions require the preposed or postposed constituent to be a
syntactic subject or pivot. The chapter concludes with an assessment of our current understanding
of discourse topic in Austronesian languages, highlighting key issues for future research.

Applicative constructions in languages of western Indonesia

Bradley McDonnell & Christina L. Truong

Book chapter in Applicative Constructions in the World’s Languages edited by Fernando Zuniga and Denis Creissels

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This chapter provides an overview of applicative constructions in a sample of eight Austronesian languages of western Indonesia. Following an orientation to the languages (§ 2) and the forms of their applicatives affixes (§ 3), we describe the semantic and syntactic properties of applicative constructions according to possible roles for the applied phrase. These include beneficiaries and recipients (§ 4), instruments and themes (§ 5), goals, locations, and addressees (§ 6), and other roles found in transitivizing constructions, e.g. content phrases and stimuli (§ 7). For each type, we note the syntactic status of the AppP and any companion phrase (the participant expressed as P in a corresponding base construction), and semantic characteristics of the AC and compatible base verbs. We find that all languages of the sample allow a beneficiary AppP and a theme companion phrase to both be expressed as core arguments in ditransitive clauses. However, when the AppP is an instrument or goal, some languages require that the companion phrase be realized as an oblique or unexpressed. Remaining sections discuss lookalike constructions where an applicative suffix shows only an aspectual or semantic effect (§ 8), and describe interactions between applicatives and causative morphology (§ 9) as well as applicatives and voice (§ 10).

Non-Malayic Languages of Sumatra and the Barrier Islands

Bradley McDonnell & Christina L. Truong

Book chapter in The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia edited by Alexander Adelaar and Antoinette Schapper

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This chapter provides a typological overview of the Non-Malayic languages of Sumatra and the Barrier islands off of the west coast of Sumatra. This group of languages is diverse, sharing few typological features that are not a result of their shared Austronesian inheritance. The chapter includes discussions of typological phenomena of broad relevance in the domains of phonology (segmental inventories, stress, reduplication, phonological processes) and morphosyntax (case, agreement, grammatical relations, word order, tense, aspect, mood, and noun phrase structure). It also critically discusses less common typological features, such as the presence of post-ploded nasals in several languages, consonant mutation of nominals in Nias, and symmetrical voice as an important typological parameter for these languages. Finally, the chapter suggests priorities and future direction for the Non-Malayic languages of Sumatra and the Barrier Islands.

On the rise of applicatives in West Nusantara

Christina L. Truong

Themed panel presentation at the 16th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics

Slides here.

This study examines the distribution of applicative constructions in Malayo-Polynesian languages of West Nusantara, and the relationships between applicatives, geographic location, genetic affiliation, and other typological features of language. Eighty-five languages were sampled across genetic groupings indigenous to West Nusantara (Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and Indonesia west of Lombok) by geographic subregion. Using existing descriptive, lexical, and pedagogical resources, each language was evaluated for the presence of applicative constructions in which morphological marking on the predicate coincides with selection of a peripheral semantic role as a core argument (Peterson 2007). Data on structural properties, including word order, alignment, voice system, and case marking, and semantic and syntactic properties of the applicative constructions were also compiled. Analysis was conducted using geospatial mapping, and statistical tests for non-random association (Pearson’s exact tests) and evaluation of possible classification trees (Random Forest algorithm, see Breiman 2001).

The results indicate that applicative constructions distinct from major voice alternations are an areal feature of West Nusantara associated with the breakdown of Philippine-type voice. Furthermore, genetic affiliation and geographic subregion are strongly predictive of the presence or absence of applicatives, with contact-induced change being implicated for the lack of applicatives in most of Borneo and mainland Southeast Asia. The presence of applicatives otherwise cuts across types of voice system (e.g. symmetrical, asymmetrical), alignment (e.g. ergative, accusative, mixed), word order (e.g. verb-initial, verb-medial) and case marking (e.g. case marking particles, pronominal distinctions, no case marking). This cast doubts on the usefulness of a proposed Indonesian-type of western Austronesian languages associated with applicatives (see Himmelmann 2005). Some features of applicative constructions are quite stable, including the distribution of beneficiary/instrument/theme-selecting functions and locative/goal-selecting functions across separate morphemes. This distribution and other evidence from remnant constructions and historical comparative studies point to West Nusantara applicative constructions being developed from earlier LV and CV Philippine-type voice constructions.

Western Austronesian applicative constructions: Typological and functional approaches

Christina L. Truong

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Ph.D. Dissertation

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This dissertation investigates applicatives in the western Austronesian languages of Indonesia,
Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore—that is, West Nusantara—and adjacent areas of the Philippines
and mainland Southeast Asia. As used in this study, an applicative construction (AC) is a kind of
clausal construction in which overt morphology on the verbal complex coincides with the selection of a peripheral semantic role (e.g. beneficiary, goal, instrument) as a core clausal argument.
In many of these languages, applicative alternations signaled by such verbal morphology—as
well as causative, aspectual, and semantic alternations signaled by the same morphemes—shape
and color the use of verbal predicates throughout the entire language.

A primary goal of the study is to understand the applicative systems of West Nusantara in
typological context, but also on their own terms, in the context of the diachronic and synchronic
systems in which they developed and are used. Special attention is also given to broadening the
description and cross-linguistic comparison of West Nusantara ACs and their functions, properties, and usage.

Valency and argumenthood in Sundanese applicative constructions

Christina L. Truong

Paper presented at the 9th International Symposium on Languages of Java, 20 May 2023

Slides available here

This paper concerns applicative constructions in Sundanese, the principal language spoken in West Java, Indonesia. Like many other western Indonesian languages, Sundanese makes use of applicative morphemes (AM) which affect the syntactic and semantic properties of the verbal clause when they are affixed to the verb stem. In linguistic typology, applicative constructions are widely understood to be marked by overt morphology, and to “allow the coding of a thematically peripheral argument or adjunct as a core argument” (Peterson 2007:1). In Sundanese, when the verbal stem bears apparent AM affixes, a thematically peripheral semantic role is selected to map to a clausal constituent, i.e., the applied phrase. However, syntactic coding of the applied phrase varies across and within AM-marked constructions. While it may show coding associated with core arguments, i.e., an unmarked NP, sometimes it takes the form of a PP instead. Given these facts, how should we understand the function of these affixes and the status of the applied phrase in Sundanese?

Using original primary data, published literature, and corpus resources, I examine three Sundanese constructions: the goal-selecting construction marked with -an, the theme-selecting construction marked with -keun, and the beneficiary-selecting construction marked with pang–keun. Clauses marked with these three AMs show different patterns of possible syntactic coding of the applied phrase and the companion phrase, i.e., the constituent that maps to the semantic role expressed as the P argument of the base verb. Even so, examination of the semantic and inferential properties of AM-marked clauses using tests from Riesberg (2014) demonstrates that these constructions have an identifiable and consistent semantic structure, and that the applied phrase shows properties of a clausal argument, rather than an adjunct, even when coded as a PP. This shows that certain syntactic properties of ACs (e.g., relative syntactic valency, syntactic coding of arguments) often do not correlate with their stable semantic properties. Thus, careful examination of semantic properties is key to developing an adequate typology of the AM-marked verbs in western Indonesian languages and the observed range of structures found with them in usage, especially those that differ from expected forms and accepted definitions for applicatives.

Lexical semantics and the constructional meaning of Western Indonesian applicatives

Christina L. Truong & Bradley McDonnell
Presentation at APLL 14, 9–11 June, 2022

In this presentation, we compare the different functions of applicative morphemes (AMs) across the lexicons of a sample of four western Indonesian languages in order to understand the influence of lexical semantics on their distribution. To show how semantic and syntactic effects of AMs pattern, we adopt the treatment of AM-marked clausal constructions as pairings of form (morphological content and syntactic
structure) and meaning (semantic content and structure) (see Goldberg 1995).

We address the following research questions: Do AM-marked constructions have an identifiable set of core meanings? How are these meanings distributed across languages of western Indonesia and their lexicons? Using data from original fieldwork, published descriptions, corpora and lexical resources, we compare unmarked and AM-marked constructions across a common set of roots based on the 80 lexical meanings on the Leipzig Valency Classes Project Questionnaire (Malchukov & Comrie 2015).

On the basis of patterns identified, we propose an inventory of core constructional
meanings marked with AMs and show how languages of the sample differ with respect to this inventory. For example, benefactive applicative constructions vary in productivity, with the Sundanese benefactives being compatible with far more lexical bases than the others. Across languages, the benefactive construction is most commonly centered around lexemes that entail acquisition, production or processing of material objects. In languages with more productive benefactive constructions, many additionally compatible verbs entail a change of state.

Our results reinforce previous findings that syntactic categories, such as transitivity of the base or the unergative/unaccusative distinction, do not adequately explain the distribution of the functions of AMs across the lexicon (see Kroeger 2007). The study also systematically expands identification of types of semantic information that speakers are likely sensitive to in producing and interpreting verbal constructions formed with these affixes, suggesting pathways along which lexicalization of such constructions has occurred.

Slides available here.

Semantic meaning and the representation of
Indonesian applicative constructions

Christina L. Truong
Presentation at SEALS 31, 18–20 May, 2022

In this paper, I show that the argument structure of base verbs and components of lexical meaning together influence compatibility of bases with functions of applicative suffixes. For example, both transitive verbs of caused motion that select a theme argument, e.g. mengambil ‘take’, membawa ‘carry’, and transitive verbs of creation that select a ‘product’ argument, e.g. memasak ‘cook’, menjahit ‘sew,’ are compatible with the benefactive applicative –kan construction, as shown below. However there are some semantic differences in resulting constructions.

Some other transitive verbs are entirely incompatible with benefactive –kan, including verbs of perception, e.g. there is no verb *menontonkan meaning ‘to watch something for someone’. Accordingly, I argue for the incorporation of lexical meaning into representations of applicative constructions, and propose ways to do so, using corpus data representing one million Indonesian sentences and drawing on construction grammar and frame semantics (Goldberg 1995, Perek & Patten 2019, Goldhahn et al. 2012).

Slides available here.