Austronesian alignment
Encyclopedia
Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian
-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment
that combines features of ergative and accusative languages. It is best known from the languages of the Philippines
, but is also found in Taiwan
, Borneo
, Madagascar
, and Guam
, and has been reconstructed for the ancestral Proto-Austronesian language. (Only traces of this system remain in other Austronesian languages
, such as Malay
and Old Javanese
.)
Whereas most languages have two voices which are used to track referents in discourse, a transitive
'active'
voice and an intransitive 'passive
' or 'antipassive' voice, prototypical Philippine languages have two voices which are both transitive. One of the two Philippine voices is similar in form to the active voice of ergative–absolutive languages, while the other is similar to the active voice of nominative–accusative languages. These perform functions similar to the active and passive/antipassive voices, respectively, in those languages.
The ergative-like Philippine voice has in the past often been called the "passive", and the accusative-like voice has often been called the "active". However, this terminology is misleading and is now disfavored—not least because the "passive" is the default voice in Austronesian languages whereas a true passive is a secondary voice—though no substitute terms have been widely accepted. Among the more common terms that have been proposed for these voices are patient trigger (the ergative-like voice) and agent trigger (the accusative-like voice), which will be used here. These phrases are taken from the terms 'agent
' and 'patient
', used in semantics
for the acting and acted-upon participants in a transitive clause
.
The three types of voice system and the grammatical cases of their core arguments can be contrasted as follows:
The Philippine cases are only approximately equivalent to their namesakes in other languages, and are therefore placed in scare quotes. ("Direct" as used here is commonly called "nominative" or "absolutive", for example.) The "ergative" case is identical in form to the Philippine genitive case
, but it is common in ergative languages for the ergative case to have the form of an oblique case such as a genitive or locative
.
Lynch
et al. 2002 (p. 59) illustrate the Philippine system with reconstructed Proto-Malayo-Polynesian examples. (The asterisks indicate a reconstruction.) The unmarked
clause order was to have the verb first and the "direct" phrase last. The voice was indicated by an affix
to the verb (suffix
-ən for patient trigger and infix
⟨um⟩ for agent trigger). In modern Philippine languages, the practical effect of this voice distinction is rather like the difference between the use of a and the in English, and it is assumed that it played a similar role in the protolanguage.
Some scholars maintain that Philippine-type languages have four voices, rather than two. Beside the ones shown above, there were also locative
and benefactive
voices. However, these are not as central as the other two. The locative is illustrated here; the suffix on the verb indicates that the noun marked by the direct case is the location of the action rather than a participant:
, the most thoroughly documented language of this type. In Tagalog, the ergative and accusative have been conflated into an "indirect" case, in contrast to the direct case. (Ng is an abbreviation of the indirect-case particle for common nouns, nang.) Note that the root of the Tagalog verb is basa "to read."
There are several viewpoints about the nature of the focus system in Tagalog:
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment
Morphosyntactic alignment
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs...
that combines features of ergative and accusative languages. It is best known from the languages of the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, but is also found in Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, Borneo
Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
, Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
, and Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...
, and has been reconstructed for the ancestral Proto-Austronesian language. (Only traces of this system remain in other Austronesian languages
Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages
The Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are a branch of the Austronesian family, proposed by Wouk & Ross , that are thought to have dispersed from a possible homeland in Sulawesi. They are called nuclear because they are the conceptual core of the Malayo-Polynesian family, including both Malay and...
, such as Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
and Old Javanese
Old Javanese language
Old Javanese is the oldest phase of the Javanese language that was spoken in areas in what is now the eastern part of Central Java and the whole of East Java....
.)
Whereas most languages have two voices which are used to track referents in discourse, a transitive
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
'active'
Active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages....
voice and an intransitive 'passive
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
' or 'antipassive' voice, prototypical Philippine languages have two voices which are both transitive. One of the two Philippine voices is similar in form to the active voice of ergative–absolutive languages, while the other is similar to the active voice of nominative–accusative languages. These perform functions similar to the active and passive/antipassive voices, respectively, in those languages.
The ergative-like Philippine voice has in the past often been called the "passive", and the accusative-like voice has often been called the "active". However, this terminology is misleading and is now disfavored—not least because the "passive" is the default voice in Austronesian languages whereas a true passive is a secondary voice—though no substitute terms have been widely accepted. Among the more common terms that have been proposed for these voices are patient trigger (the ergative-like voice) and agent trigger (the accusative-like voice), which will be used here. These phrases are taken from the terms 'agent
Agent (grammar)
In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the cause or initiator of an event. Agent is the name of the thematic role...
' and 'patient
Patient (grammar)
In linguistics, a grammatical patient, also called the target or undergoer, is the participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out. A patient as differentiated from a theme must undergo a change in state. A theme is denoted by a stative verb, where a patient is denoted by a dynamic...
', used in semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
for the acting and acted-upon participants in a transitive clause
Clause
In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...
.
The three types of voice system and the grammatical cases of their core arguments can be contrasted as follows:
| Morphological alignment | Case of basic intransitive clause | Cases of basic transitive clause | Cases of the secondary voice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accusative (as most European languages) |
nominative (same case as Agent) |
Active voice | Passive voice |
| nominative Nominative case The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments... (Agent) |
nominative (Patient) | ||
| accusative Accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions... (Patient) |
|||
| Ergative (as most Australian languages) |
absolutive (same case as Patient) |
Active voice | Antipassive voice |
| absolutive Absolutive case The absolutive case is the unmarked grammatical case of a core argument of a verb which is used as the citation form of a noun.-In ergative languages:... (Patient) |
absolutive (Agent) | ||
| ergative Ergative case The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:... (Agent) |
|||
| Austronesian (as most Philippine languages) |
"direct Direct case In Indo-Aryan languages, and Eastern Iranian languages, the direct case is the name given to a grammatical case used with all three core relations: the agent of transitive verbs, the patient of transitive verbs, and the argument of intransitive verbs... " (the case common to the two transitive voices) |
Patient trigger | Agent trigger |
| "direct" (Patient) | "direct" (Agent) | ||
| ergative (Agent) | accusative (Patient) |
The Philippine cases are only approximately equivalent to their namesakes in other languages, and are therefore placed in scare quotes. ("Direct" as used here is commonly called "nominative" or "absolutive", for example.) The "ergative" case is identical in form to the Philippine genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
, but it is common in ergative languages for the ergative case to have the form of an oblique case such as a genitive or locative
Locative case
Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
.
Lynch
John Lynch (linguist)
John Lynch, born 8 July 1946, in Sydney, Australia, is a linguist specializing in Oceanic languages. He is an emeritus professor of Pacific Languages and the former Director of the Pacific Languages Unit at the University of the South Pacific in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Prior to moving to Vanuatu, he...
et al. 2002 (p. 59) illustrate the Philippine system with reconstructed Proto-Malayo-Polynesian examples. (The asterisks indicate a reconstruction.) The unmarked
Markedness
Markedness is a specific kind of asymmetry relationship between elements of linguistic or conceptual structure. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one...
clause order was to have the verb first and the "direct" phrase last. The voice was indicated by an affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
to the verb (suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
-ən for patient trigger and infix
Infix
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem . It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the end of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.-Indonesian:...
⟨um⟩ for agent trigger). In modern Philippine languages, the practical effect of this voice distinction is rather like the difference between the use of a and the in English, and it is assumed that it played a similar role in the protolanguage.
| *ka’ən-ən | na | manuk | a | wai | ||||
| eat-(patient trigger) | (ergative) | chicken | (direct) | mango |
- 'The chicken is eating the mango', or The mango is being eaten by the chicken'
| *k⟨um⟩a’ən | ta | wai | a | manuk | ||||
| ⟨(agent trigger)⟩eat | (accusative) | mango | (direct) | chicken |
- 'The chicken is eating a mango.'
Some scholars maintain that Philippine-type languages have four voices, rather than two. Beside the ones shown above, there were also locative
Locative case
Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
and benefactive
Benefactive case
The benefactive case is a grammatical case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g...
voices. However, these are not as central as the other two. The locative is illustrated here; the suffix on the verb indicates that the noun marked by the direct case is the location of the action rather than a participant:
| *ka’ən-an | na | manuk | a | kahiw | ||||
| eat-(location trigger) | (ergative) | chicken | (direct) | tree |
- 'The chicken is eating in the tree', or 'The tree is being eaten in by the chicken'
In Tagalog
A broadly similar system is found in TagalogTagalog language
Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...
, the most thoroughly documented language of this type. In Tagalog, the ergative and accusative have been conflated into an "indirect" case, in contrast to the direct case. (Ng is an abbreviation of the indirect-case particle for common nouns, nang.) Note that the root of the Tagalog verb is basa "to read."
| b⟨in⟩asa | ng | tao | ang | aklat. | ||||
| ⟨(past:patient trigger)⟩read | (indirect) | person | (direct) | book |
- The book was read by a person.
| b⟨um⟩asa | ng | aklat | ang | tao. | ||||
| ⟨(past:agent trigger)⟩read | (indirect) | book | (direct) | person |
- The person read a book.
There are several viewpoints about the nature of the focus system in Tagalog:
- One is that Tagalog focus is voice. The following voices are then posited for Tagalog:
- Active voice
- Passive voice ( direct passive)
- Local voice
- Instrumental/benefactive voice
- Another is that Tagalog focus is case-markingGrammatical caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
. For example, ang is used when the prepositional phrase is in focus, while sa is used when it is not in focus. In the example given below, note that the root of the Tagalog verb is bilí, which means "to buy."
| b⟨in⟩il-hán | ng | tao | ng | aklat | ang | tindahan. | ||||||
| ⟨(past:patient trigger)⟩buy-(locative suffix) | (indirect) | person | (indirect) | book | (direct) | store |
- The book was bought by the person at the store. (Store is the focus.)
| b⟨um⟩ilí | ang | tao | ng | aklat | sa | tindahan. | ||||||
| ⟨(past:agent trigger)⟩buy | (direct) | person | (indirect) | book | (preposition) | store |
- The person bought the book at the store. (Person is the focus.)