Voice systems in the Austronesian languages of Nusantara: typology, symmetricality and Undergoer orientation

Abstract

This paper deals with the typology of the Austronesian (henceforth AN) languages of Nusantara (encompassing Indonesia, East Timor, the non-Indonesian part of Borneo) by looking at their voice systems and voice markings. It will be demonstrated that they consist of a number of language-types, which can be accounted for in terms of different (default) orientations along a continuum of Actor (A) vs. Undergoer (U).1 By and large, the AN languages of Nusantara are syntactically symmetrical, but morpho-pragmatically more or less U-orientated in a number of aspects. The paper is organised as follows. A brief overview of grammatical relations and markings in AN languages of Nusantara is given in section 2, followed by the descriptions of language types and their typical properties in section 3. Section 4 provides discussions on voice system variations, whereby notions of Actor vs. Undergoer orientations are clarified and used to account for different kinds of ‘ergative’ properties that splash out throughout the AN languages of Nusantara in their morphology, syntax and discourse. Conclusion is given in section 5.