Austronesian Voice Systems: An Eastern Indonesian Perspective

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The Austronesian language family, arguably the largest in the world in terms of speakers and geographic spread, has been problematic to both descriptive and theoretical linguists for the unusual voice systems found in its Western Austronesian and Formosan branches. Unlike the two-way active/passive opposition in English and other languages, the Austronesian system allows the large number of voice options and the unusual discourse distribution of these options, with what appears to notionally correspond to the English passive occurring more frequently. Equally significant are the lack of the clear pattern of subject/object reversal and the lack of change in transitivity from transitive to intransitive as seen in the active/passive system. The 'symmetrical' nature of the Austronesian voice alternations has significant implications for the universality of a number of widely-held grammatical concepts and assumptions such as 'Subject' and 'Object' and the existence of a basic voice such as the active voice in the active/passive system. An international team consisting of Dr. Masayoshi Shibatani (U.S.A.), Dr. Fay Wouk (New Zealand), Dr. I Wayan Arka (Australia), and Dr. Ketut Artawa (Indonesia), and several American and Indonesian graduate students will explore the empirical and theoretical issues of the Austronesian voice system from a unique perspective, viewing it in the light of a gradual attrition pattern from the original Proto Austronesian four-way contrastive system, via three-way and two-way systems, to complete loss. The empirical basis of the study comes from the languages of eastern Indonesia, in the archipelago stretching eastward from Bali to Timor Island, where the two-way system (as seen in Balinese) shows different degrees of attrition as we move from the west (Balinese, Sasak) to the east (Sikka, Lamaholot, etc.) via the central region (Sumbawan, Bima, etc.). The study will examine voice phenomena in a range of languages, integrating three perspectives: syntax, semantics and discourse. The research will enhance scholarly understanding of several understudied languages of eastern Indonesia, thereby correcting the currently observed imbalance in the input to theoretical studies of Austronesian languages. In addition to gathering and making available fresh data of both synchronic and diachronic significance, this project advances linguistic theory by deepening our understanding of voice phenomena, a central concern of all theoretical approaches ranging from language typology to generative studies. The project also aims to produce descriptive grammars of four underdescribed languages (Lio, Sikka, Manggarai and Lamaholot) of eastern Indonesia. Broader impacts of this research include: (1) on-site training for future researchers by involving graduate students from the US (Rice University) and Indonesia (Udayana University) in a unique collaborative setting of fieldwork on Flores Island, (2) promotion of international collaboration by involving scholars of Austronesian linguistics from the US, Indonesia, Australian and New Zealand; the resulting international network of researchers will improve the research infrastructure, and (3) contribution to the world-wide efforts on the documentation of endangered languages through the field investigation and grammatical descriptions of the minority languages of Flores Island facing marginalization.