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voice and grammatical relations in indonesian a new perspective and i wayan arka udayana university iarka@denpasar.wasantara.net.id christopher d manning university of sydney cmanning@mail.usyd.edu.au proceedings of the lfg98 conference the university of queensland brisbane mirriam butt and tracy holloway king editors 1998 csli publications http www-csli.stanford.edu/publications
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abstract this paper deals with the voice system of indonesian and argues that certain of the constructions traditionally analysed as passives should be given a different treatment parallel to arguments by kroeger 1993 for tagalog we examine the role of different conceptions of subject and their place in binding we show that unlike other western austronesian languages the logical subject l-subject for short i.e the semantically most prominent argument plays little role in binding being a logicalsubject alone does not make an argument a binder syntactic prominence is crucial and in particular the data on binding in indonesian presented here further confirms the notion of syntacticised argument structured a-str first proposed in manning 1994 1996b and also adopted in arka 1998 wherein a central role is given to the notion of a-subject like other austronesian languages the surface grammatical subject i.e the subj in the f-structure or gr-subject for short plays little role especially in the binding of morphologically complex reflexives the data from binding is supported by other syntactic tests such as topicalisation with pronominal copy 1 grammatical relations in indonesian in brief indonesian transitive verbs can appear prefixed with men or di or without a prefix.1 there is evidence that the agent/l-subject amir appearing with menhenceforth agentive voice or av verbs in indonesian as in 1 is syntactically the surface grammatical subject 1 a amir mem-baca buku amir men-read book `amir read the book itu that among the important properties of the gr-subject in indonesian kana 1986 are a appears canonically in a preverbal position b the only function that can be questioned by a clefted question word relativised on or clefted and c the only function that can be controlled either as an equi-target of certain verbs or as the gapped function in controlled adverbial clauses an additional test of a morphosyntactic character is that the 3sg pronoun can optionally be just ia rather than the usual dia when it is functioning as the gr-subject of a clause adding adverbs etc shows that this form is indeed grammatically not phonologically conditioned thus amir in 1a is the gr-subject because it comes preverbally it can be relativised in a cleft sentence to give a slightly different pragmatic implication 1 b amir yang mem-baca buku amir rel men-read book `it is amir who read the book itu that it can be an equi-target 1 c amir amir ingin want membaca men-read buku book itu that it can be replaced by ia 1 the men prefix takes forms homorganic with a following consonant.
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d ia mem-baca buku 3sg men-read book `he read the book itu that it is also widely agreed that the agent of di verbs expressed by a pp as in 2 is an oblique while the theme has grammatical subject properties the grammatical relations in 2 thus mirror an english passive and one might presume that di is a passive marker and we gloss it that way in 2 but actually the situation is a little more complicated as we discuss below 2 oleh buku itu di-baca book that pass-read by `the book was read by amir amir name the situation is less clear in other constructions where the l-subject is not the grsubject namely when it is expressed by the pronominals saya/kamu/dia or the clitics ku/kau nya in the sentences shown in 3 all these sentences have the undergoer as grsubject and the verbs lack the men i.e the av marker being either bare or prefixed with di many studies in indonesian syntax are unclear as to quite what syntactic status to give such sentences as suggested by the glosses such sentences are normally appropriately translated into english with active sentences but syntactically they have been analysed as passives by previous studies chung 1976a kana 1986 among others apparently due to the clear property that the undergoer is the gr-subject and comes sentence initially 3 a buku itu saya/kamu/dia book that 1sg/2/3 `the book i read buku itu ku kau-baca book that 1sg 2-read `the book you read buku itu di-baca-nya book that pass-read-3 `the book she read baca read b c kana 1986 explicitly claims that the l-subject or the initial subject i.e the initial-1 in rg terminology in a sentence of the type in 3 is a final 1-chomeur i.e a non-core argument basically an oblique however in what follows we show evidence that the pronominal immediately preceding the verb 3a the proclitic 3b and enclitic 3c are still term/core arguments the evidence is mainly from binding with some supporting evidence from a pronominal copy test control and discourse properties hence in our view the passive analysis for 3 is untenable unlike -nya `3 3c see also 2.3.3 the other enclitics -ku `1 -mu `2 and -kau `2 cannot be understood as l-subjects 4a but only as undergoers 4b 4 a buku itu di baca-ku mu
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book that pass read-1 2 `i/you read the book b amir me-lihat-ku mu name av-see-1/2/3 `amir saw me/you i/you saw amir 2 syntactic expressions of the l-subject and binding 2.1 a-structure and binding theory in brief lfg has proposed a model of parallel representations and in general prominence can be defined on any level accounts such as dalrymple 1993 and t mohanan 1990 have made use of this to propose that some parts of binding theory may be sensitive to one level and other parts to another level in contrast manning 1996a has argued that the principal constraints of binding theory can be defined on a level of syntacticised a-str while admitting that some anaphors may require additional constraints such as also requiring the binder to be a gr-subject within this theory term arguments outrank obliques in a-str and within each of those groupings prominence is based on thematic or lexical conceptual structure prominence following hellan 1988 2.2 binding in the av constructions in the av constructions marked by men the l-subject a-subject and gr-subject are identical for example the relativization test shows that the agent saya in 5 is the gr-subject 5b by way of contrast the reflexive object cannot be relativised 5c it is also the a-subject a-commanding the reflexive theme diri saya i.e the object in 5a which we assume to have an argument structure as in 5d where the vertical bar is used to separate core or term arguments from obliques by way of contrast an attempt to make the gr-subject an anaphor fails as is shown in 5e 5 a saya menyerahkan diri saya 1sg av.surrender self 1 `i surrendered myself to the police ke polisi to police polisi police polisi police b yang saya menyerahkan diri saya ke 1sg rel av.surrender self.1 to `it is me who surrendered myself to the police yang diri saya saya menyerahkan self.1 rel 1sg av.surrender `it is myself that i surrendered to the police
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in short the l-subject/agent in the av construction is an a-subject and also a grsubject binding in 5 is straightforward and exactly as one would expect from wellknown accusative type languages the data thus far does not serve to isolate any particular analysis 2.3 the status of the actor in non av constructions binding properties show that non av verbs cannot be lumped together as a homogenous class traditionally simply called passives in what follows we discuss a variety of non av verbs and examine the syntactic status of their l-subjects based on evidence from reflexive binding 2.3.1 the status of the actor in passive constructions evidence from binding as shown in 6 an l-subject appearing as an oblique pp cannot bind a reflexive functioning as a gr-subject this is consistent with a passive analysis of this construction with the l-subject being an oblique 6 a dirinya di-serahkan ke polisi oleh self.3 pass-surrender to police by `himself was surrendered to the police by amir dirinya di-ajukan sebagai self.3 di-nominate as `self was nominated as a candidate calon candidate amir name oleh by amir amir b the same is true for pronominal agents which can appear either as an enclitic to the preposition oleh-nya or as a prepositional object oleh dia they cannot bind a reflexive gr-subject.as shown by the contrast in 7 7 a dirinya yang dia ajukan sebagai calon candidate 3 `self.3 self.3 rel 3 nominate as `it is himself that he nominated as a candidate b dirinya self.3 yang rel oleh-nya/oleh dia di-ajukan sebagai calon passas candidate by-3/by 3sg nominate `it is himself that is nominated as a candidate by him/her self.3 `3 the failure of binding in 6 7 shows that semantic binding does not apply in indonesian it is not the case that there is `semantic binding and all l-subjects are possible binders and can bind thematically lower arguments within their clause rather it seems to be the case that although the passive agent is an l-subject the crucial fact is that it does not a-command the reflexive since the reflexive gr-subject is higher in the astr because it is promoted in the passive manning 1996b manning and sag 1998 2 under the theory of pollard and sag 1994 or manning and sag 1998 the reflexive in 6 or 7 is an exempt anaphor and should be able to be bound by a suitable discourse referent but at any rate binding by the oblique agent does not seem possible here other austronesian languages such as balinese arka 1998 do allow a non a-commanded exempt reflexive to be bound by the oblique agent 2
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it is not that the passive agent is inert with respect to the binding theory however examine the following sentences with a three place predicate `ask 8 a amir/dia menanyai saya tentang name av.ask 1 about `amir/he asked me about himself saya di-tanyai oleh amir/dia nya 1 pass-ask by amir/3sg/3sg `i was asked by amir/him about himself dirinya self tentang about dirinya self b as expected according to the theory of manning 1996b the agent oblique can bind other oblique arguments such as the oblique theme in 8b because it a-commands such arguments the argument structure of 8b would be as in 8c 8 c
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2.3.2 verbs with preverbal pronominals objective voice verbs the l-subject of the type exemplified in 3a-b can be of any person but it must be a pronominal a common noun cannot appear in this construction unless it is used vocatively 12 a buku itu orang itu book that man the `the book the man read buku itu akan ayah book that fut father `the book father will buy baca read beli buy b there are two forms for 1sg and 2sg and the orthography writes the shorter perhaps reduced ones as attached clitics but all of them must appear immediately preceding the verb we are unsure at this point whether there is good phonological evidence for regarding any of them as phonologically attached nothing can intervene in between sentence 13b is bad because the auxiliary akan intervenes 13c is bad because an adverb intervenes this suggests these words occupy a position at the left edge of the vp reserved for pronouns or pronominal clitics 13 a akan rumah itu house that fut `the house i will sell rumah house rumah house itu that itu that saya 1sg akan fut saya 1sg akan fut saya 1sg jual sell jual sell besok tomorrow jual sell b c if the bare form of the verb is used as in these examples then the pronominal form cannot be omitted 14 rumah house itu that akan fut jual sell the fact that the agent must be present might be an indication that it is a term rather than an oblique note that sentence 14 is not acceptable in any interpretation e.g it cannot be interpreted as having a first or second person l-subject also there is good evidence that the sentence-initial np in these examples is the gr-subject rather than just some kind of preposed topic for instance it is the np that is the equi-target chung 1976b 15 saja mem-bawa surat itu untuk dapat i men-bring letter the for can `i brought the letter to be able to be read by you kau-baca you-read
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2.3.2.1 binding evidence evidence from binding further shows that the agent pronominal in this construction has a very different status to a passive agent indeed we argue that it is really a term hence an a-subject in the following sentences the reflexive gr-subjects can be bound by the preverbal pronominals 16 evidence that the reflexives are grsubjects comes from their appearance in the canonical subject position and the possibility of cleft formation by yang 17 attempts to cleft a non-subject reflexive i.e by making the verbs appear in av fail 18 19 16 a diri saya saya serahkan ke self.3 1sg surrender to `i surrendered myself to the police polisi police b dirimu mesti kau serahkan ke polisi self.2 must 2 surrender to police `you must surrender youself to the police dirinya mesti dia serahkan ke polisi self.3 must 3sg surrender to police she must surrender herself/himself to the police diri saya yang saya serahkan ke self.1 rel 1sg surrender to `it is myself that i surrendered to the police polisi police c 17 a b dirimu yang mesti kau serahkan ke polisi self.2 rel must 2 surrender to police `it is yourself that you must surrender to the police dirinya yang mesti dia serahkan ke polisi self.3 rel must 3sg surrender to police `it is herself/himself that she must surrender to the police dia menyerahkan dirinya ke polisi 3sg av-surrender self.3 to police she surrendered herself/himself to the police self obj c 18 a b dirinya yang dia meny serahkan ke polisi self.3 rel 3sg av-surrender to police `it is herself/himself that she surrendered to the police dia tidak ingat dengan dirinya 3 neg remember with self.3 she did not remember herself/himself dengan dirinya yang dia tidak ingat self obl 19 a b relativisation of obl crucially this binding behaviour differs from that of the oblique agent appearing in a pp headed by oleh of the type that was shown in 6 this suggests that the syntactic status of the l-subject appearing as a preverbal pronominal in a non av verb exemplified in 16 17 differs from that of an l-subject appearing in the pp with the di-
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verb in 6 the di-verb with the pp agent is a passive construction with the agent/lsubject being an oblique the verb without men with a preverbal pronominal is not a passive verb the l-subject is a term hence an a-subject this corresponds to the idea that the sentence feels semantically `active usually translated as an active despite the fact that the non-agent argument is the surface gr-subject a construction with a cross mapping where an agent a-subject is not a gr-subject but still a term and the gr-subject is a non-agent core argument is an ergative construction dixon 1994 manning 1996b following the terminology for tagalog from kroeger 1993 and balinese by arka 1998 and wechsler and arka to appear the indonesian verbs with cross-mapping exemplified in 16 17 can be labelled as objective voice ov verbs but this `voice should really be interpreted as an ergative construction within the language given the pervasive evidence from binding crosslinguistically manning1996a 1996b arka 1998 it is misleading to collapse ov/ergative constructions with passives or indeed any of the traditional `voices 2.3.2.2 control of complex arguments additional evidence for a preverbal pronoun being a term comes from control of complex arguments it has been observed that the functional controller of a complex argument is restricted to a term bresnan 1982,3 arka and simpson 1998 for example the sentence to go there was asked of john by me is unacceptable because we cannot express the controller of john as a term argument as an np like balinese arka and simpson 1998 indonesian shows a possible control into a complex argument acting as gr-subject and crucially the controller must be a term 20 a saya/kamu/dia sudah men-coba mencari kerja di 1sg/2/3pl perf av-try av-search job at `i/you/they have tried to look for a job in the city kota city b men-cari kerja di kota yang sudah saya/kamu/mereka coba av-search job at city rel perf 1sg/2/3pl try `looking for a job in the city is what i/you she has tried men-cari kerja di kota yang sudah av-search job at city rel perf di-coba oleh saya/kamu/mereka/amir pass-try by 1sg/2/3pl/name `looking for a job in the city is what has been tried by me/you/them/amir c coba `try semantically has two arguments a trier a simple argument and the thing tried a proposition a complex argument it is a commitment type of verb characterised by having a committer i.e the trier as a controller 20a shows the av construction with the controller as gr-subject acceptable 20b shows the ov construction with the controller as a preverbal pronoun acceptable 20c shows the controller as a non-term oblique and crucially the sentence is then unacceptable this test again shows the preverbal pronoun grouping with other terms as opposed to obliques in fact bresnan s claim was that the functional controller be a semantically unrestricted function among which she included subject object and secondary object 3
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2.3.2.3 topicalization with a pronominal copy a little further evidence for the pronouns before the verb being term arguments can be derived from examining the construction where an np becomes an external topic at the left margin of the clause and then is repeated by a pronoun within the clause this is possible when the pronoun is a term argument as in 21a but it is not possible with clear obliques such as the objects of prepositions see 21b 21 a orang itu dia tidak mau person that 3sg neg willing that person she refused to come datang come dia 3sg b orang itu saya yang di-cari-cari oleh person that 1 rel di-search-search by `as for that person it is me who she is looking for note now that topicalization with pronominal copy is possible with the pronominal arguments that precede the verb supporting our regarding them as term arguments 22 orang itu saya yang dia cari-cari person that 1 rel 3sg ov.search-search as for the person it is me who he is looking for 2.3.3 -nya its distribution the enclitic -nya attached to a head verb always expresses a core argument that is not the gr-subject what we might term an obj or a term-complement it can express an l-subject/agent as in 3c or a patient functioning as an object as in 23a -nya cannot be the gr-subject 23b that is the structure in 23b is forced to be an ov construction by dropping men making the preverbal pronominal agent dia a non grsubject we attempt to force the enlitic patient -nya to act as the gr-subject instead it fails in other words although both the agent and patient arguments of the transitive verb are present in sentence 23b the sentence is bad because it lacks a gr-subject neither argument can act as the gr-subject note that a normal pronominal gr-subject can come post verbally 23c the point is that -nya can appear attached to the verb only when another argument is the gr-subject in the av verb marked by men as in 23a where -nya is the undergoer or else in the di verb as in 3c where -nya is the actor 23 a dia men-jelaskan-nya 3 av-explain-3 `she explained it dia jelaskan-nya 3 ov.explain-3 she explained it akan saya cari dia fut 1 search 3sg `i m going to look for him/her b c.
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the enclitic -nya can also appear attached to the preposition expressing an oblique agent 24a as noted previously the pronominal dia is also possible these forms must again appear with a di verb hence the unacceptability of 24b the enclitic -nya cannot be doubled with the appearance of the preverbal pronominal dia 24c-d thus the contrast between 24a and 24c-d suggests that di is not really a pronominal pace kana 1986 who suggests that di is a shortened form of dia 24 a oleh-nya buku itu sudah di-baca book that already pass-read by-3 `the book was already read by him/her buku book buku book buku book itu that itu that itu that sudah already sudah already sudah already baca read dia 3sg dia 3sg oleh-nya by-3 baca-nya read-3 baca read oleh-nya by-3 oleh by oleh by dia 3sg dia 3sg b c d 2.3.3.1 binding by an enclitic -nya hosted by the head verb this behaviour contrasts strongly with the binding behaviour of the enclitic -nya attached to the head verb consider 25 a dirinya tidak di-perhatikan-nya self.3 neg di-care-3 she didn t take care of himself/herself dirinya selalu di-utamakan-nya self.3 always di-prioritise-3 she always giving priority of himself 3 `self.3 b it can be concluded that the third person agent appearing in pp is an oblique whereas the pronominal clitic hosted by the head verb is not but rather a term complement in an ergative construction it is still a term and an a-subject and so can bind the reflexive gr-subject this perhaps in part motivates its interesting discourse function briefly mentioned below 2.3.3.2 pronominal copy with -nya the binding evidence supporting regarding -nya as a term in a transitive clause is again backed up by evidence for the possibility of topicalization with a pronominal copy which as we have seen is only possible with term arguments 26 orang itu saya yang menolong-nya person that 1 rel av.help-3 as for the person i helped him/her 2.3.4 binding by a postverbal np there is one final complication in the discussion of verbs with a di prefix until now we have shown examples with the agent expressed within a pp but somewhat
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surprisingly di verbs can also take a postverbal np agent as in 27 indeed when the np is indefinite as in 27a the agent np is preferred to the pp some accounts suggest that this is possible because the preposition is in some sense optional but this does not seem to be correct as a postverbal agent np is only possible when it is adjacent to the verb myhill 1988 hence the acceptability contrast in 28a-d this suggests that the agent np occupies a different phrase structure position to the agent pp 27 a saya di-pukul orang 1 di-hit man `i was hit by someone oleh by orang man 27 b saya di-marah-i oleh 1 di-angry-appl by `i was scolded by amir/father amir/ayah amir /father amir amir 28 a saya di-beli-kan baju oleh 1 di-buy-appl shirt by `i was bought a shirt by amir amir baju saya di-beli-kan 1 di-buy-appl amir shirt `i was bought a shirt by amir saya 1 saya 1 di-beli-kan di-buy-appl di-beli-kan di-buy-appl baju shirt oleh by amir amir amir amir b c d baju shirt the question is what is the status of the postverbal np agent the fact that it occurs without a preposition suggests that it is a term argument on the other hand it cannot bind the gr-subject reflexive 29 a dirinya tidak di-perhatikan amir self.3 neg di-care name `himself was not taken care by amir dirinya selalu di-utamakan amir self.3 always di-prioritise name she always giving priority of himself b furthermore it cannot bind the theme object 29 c dirinyai j amiri di-perlihatkan ayahj foto name di-show father picture self.3 `amiri was shown the picture of himselfi j by fatherj if the agent np ayah is a term it should be a possible binder for dirinya because it is thematically the most prominent item this suggests that it should be regarded as an oblique.
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further evidence comes from possessor topicalisation with a pronominal copy consider the possessor topicalisation of the subject 30a of the object 30b and of the postverbal agent np 30c only the first two are acceptable sentence 30d shows the non topicalised version of 30c 30 a orang itu ayah-nya mencari-cari person that father-3poss av.search-search `the personi his/heri father is looking for you kamu 2 b orang itu saya yang menolong ayah-nya person that 1sg rel av.help father-3poss `the personi it is me who helped his/heri father orang itu kamu di-cari-cari ayah-nya person that 2 di-search-search father-3poss `the personi you are wanted by his/heri father kamu di-cari-cari ayah orang 2 di-seach-search father person `you are wanted by the father of the person itu that c d myhill 1988 in fact argues that the agent noun is here incorporated it is unclear to us whether we would want to say that myhill is basing this analysis on the loose definition of incorporation from mithun 1984:849 which covers cases where `a verb and its direct object are simply juxtaposed to form an especially tight bond the verb and noun remain separate words phonologically but Ö the n loses its syntactic status as an argument of the sentence and the vn unit functions as an intransitive predicate but it is interesting to note that in this case there is evidence of the agent noun preceding enclitic particles which are semantically modifying the verb for example myhill gives the example in 31 where the particle -lah is giving emphasis to the temporal sequencing of the verb and not to the agent noun.4 31 sebuah talam yang berisi penganan diangkat orang-lah a tray that full snacks brought person-lah hadapan sutan menjinjing alam honorific s m a `a tray full of snacks was brought by a person to sutan menjinjing alam ke to on the other hand this construction is definitely not the canonical case of noun incorporation widely discussed in the syntactic literature since as myhill discusses multiword agent nps can appear in this construction at any rate all the available evidence suggests that the postverbal np agent is not a term but an oblique and so we will analyse it thus this example appears to be from an old text or perhaps malay at any rate it sounds odd to the first author in contemporary indonesian -lah seems to be in complementary distribution with a post-verbal agent np 4
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3 analysis to summarize the discussion so far binding suggests that an agent/l-subject can have the syntactic expressions shown in table 1 given the a-str based binding theory only the l-subject in av a ov b and di-verb-nya c.i is a possible binder of term arguments within the same clause in indonesian table 1 nominal types/category non-pron pron not-nya pronominal proclitic not non-pronominal i -nya hosted by the head v ii -nya hosted by a p iii non pron expressed in pp/np np pp a b c types of verbs av verb ov verb di verb syntactic status gr-subject a-subject not gr-subject but a-subject i.e still a term not gr-subject but a-subject oblique i.e not a-subject oblique i.e not a-subject oblique i.e not a-subject d ter verb note now that the presence of di in conjunction with -nya i.e c.i in table 1 example 25 argues that di is not really a passive marker because clauses with di and -nya represent an ergative construction which is still transitive rather di seems to be best analysed as simply encoding the mapping of an undergoer term to subj which is only part of what a passive marker does di leaves the status of the l-subject unspecified allowing other specifications such as the information structure to determine the exact syntactic expression of the l-subject in the examples we have seen the lsubject can be expressed in any of five ways i as a preverbal pronoun ii as a pronominal prefix iii as -nya as a suffix to the verb iv as a prepositional phrase headed by oleh and involving either a noun/pronoun or -nya again or v as a postverbal oblique np while there are various other possibilities such as gr-subject postposing it seems that the basic phrase structure that we have to work with is the following 32 subj np i obj pron ip i vp obj obj cl v cl agt only agt only obl/obj np obl pp neg modal all the verbal clitic positions including the preceding full pronouns must be immediately adjacent to the verb and are reserved for words with pronominal meaning that express the object/term-complement of the clause these are used when the verb remains transitive as shown by 32 the preverbal positions are positions for agent term complements only when these positions are occupied the clause is in the objective voice the post verbal clitic position is not restricted to an agent we have
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observed that -nya appearing in this position can be an agent example 3c or a non agent example 23a however we note that -nya is somewhat exceptional in this regard since the other enclitics that appear in this slot only express an undergoer term complement when the verb has been passivized these slots cannot be used but the agent can be realized as an oblique either as an np oblique which again must be adjacent to the verb or as a pp oblique which need not be these informal remarks raise some questions about how to treat and constrain the alternation between a syntactically active and ergative transitive construction and the passive construction the most revealing approach to us appears to be to say that various morphemes serve merely to place constraints on the mapping between argument structure and grammatical relations using the terms actor and undergoer as convenient if informal shortcuts for the first two term arguments in the argument structure and as a correspondence function picking out the argument structure we could then suggest the following constraints 33 a b c d men di ter saya/kamu/dia ku kaupreceding verb -ku mu kau np inside vp subj actor subj undergoer oblag actor actor pred `pro undergoer cannot express actor term-complement e f these constraints together with a constraint on mapping to the effect that there must be a gr-subject bresnan and kanerva 1989 are sufficient to ensure that only the observed patterns of linking actually occur the constraint 33f is somewhat unsatisfactory but reflects that indonesian does not allow the free appearance of np actor term-complements in this respect it is like english and unlike say balinese arka 1988 however actor term-complements can be expressed by the various pronouns and verbal clitics to work through some of the possibilities in turn 1 if men is prefixed to the verb then the actor must be the subject the other term in a transitive argument structure must become the object and can be expressed either as an object np or via a enclitic suffix on the verb 2 if di is prefixed to the verb then the subject is the undergoer this could be either because the verb is passivized or because the ergative construction is being used a if the verb is passivized then the optional agentive oblique can be expressed either as a pp headed by oleh or in the immediately postverbal position for realization of agentive obliques that we discussed in 2.3.6 b if the verb is not passivized then the actor remains a term argument and must be expressed in the sentence since the pre-verbal slot for expression is already taken and an np inside the vp and most of the enclitics cannot express an actor the only possibility is when the agent is realized by -nya 3 if saya/kamu/dia immediately precedes the verb or ku kau appear as proclitics on the verb then they express the agent but as a object/term complement therefore the undergoer must fill the subject slot however these are pronominal clitics and therefore they cannot co-occur with another expression of the agent such as a pp headed by oleh.
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