Philippine-type voice affixes as A'-agreement markers: Evidence from causatives and ditransitives
Victoria Chen
March 2017 

This paper investigates the shared case patterns in causative and ditransitive constructions across Philippine-type Formosan languages and demonstrates how they motivate a nominative-accusative analysis for the Philippine-type voice system. With novel data from Puyuma, Amis, and Seediq, I argue that (i) pivot-marking in Philippine-type languages is better analyzed as a marker of information structure status (topic), rather than the reflex of structural absolutive/nominative Case, and (ii) Philippine-type voice affixes are better analyzed as A’-agreement markers, rather than transitivity/applicative marking. Last, I discuss how the agreement approach to voice affixes offers a unitary account for the lack of noun/verb distinction in Philippine-type languages.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/003926 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Proceedings of AFLA 23
keywords:	austronesian-type voice system, philippine-type voice system, voice, ergativity, western austronesian languages, morphology, syntax
Downloaded:	295 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]