Tag: Austronesian voice

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

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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.

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.

Functions of western Indonesian “applicative” affixes

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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Sundanese benefactives

Christina L. Truong
Working paper based on original data, May 2019

The Sundanese verbal system includes a substitutive benefactive construction which indicates that the agent performs the action on behalf of, and instead of, a beneficiary. This construction is formed with the prefix pang– and the causative/applicative suffix –keun. In this paper I describe the morphosyntax of this construction, including the morphological components found on the verb, the morphophonemic processes involved, and the syntactic properties of various types of clauses with substitutive benefactive meanings. Finally, I compare Sundanese substitutive benefactives with other Western Austronesian benefactive constructions and discuss their historical origin.

Based on the study, the Sundanese pang– prefix appears be derived from the agentive nominalizer *paŋ, which when used in applicatives came to have the meaning ‘to serve as an agent of an action for s.o.’ Sundanese substitutive benefactive verbs can be transitive or ditransitive, and ditransitive argument structure appears to be fully grammatical in both active and passive voice. However, Sundanese also has ditransitive instrumental and simple benefactive applicatives, but I present some evidence that these are not fully grammatical in active voice. The association between passive voice and such three-place verbal constructions might be linked to the four-way voice system of Proto-Austronesian, with earlier undergoer, instrumental, and beneficiary voice functions being subsumed into modern passive voice.
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Languages of Sulawesi

Bilinski Educational Foundation Grant. Summer 2018.

Many indigenous languages of Sulawesi remain underdocumented and many more are underdescribed. Despite this, the languages of Sulawesi may be key to understanding important linguistic issues in the region, such as the nature and development of Austronesian voice, and the prehistory of Indonesia. In partnership with local organizations and community leaders, recordings were made of native speakers in two language communities of Sulawesi. Materials to be archived in Kaipuleohone Language Archive.