Voice, Valence and Focus in Makassarese (handout) - Listen -

Voice, Valence and Focus in Makassarese (handout)

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Dr Anthony Jukes (Australian Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Research on Language Diversity, La Trobe University) on Makassarese, a language of South Sulawesi (Indonesia) spoken by up to 2 million people. It has a set of verb prefixes cognate with symmetrical voice-marking morphology in other Austronesian languages of Indonesia and the Philippines. However unlike many of these languages Makassarese has an asymmetrical voice system, involving a passive prefix opposed to several ‘active’ constructions, including one which it is tempting to call ‘anti passive’ given the ergative alignment of pronominal cross-referencing. This paper examines the system and will discuss why the anti passive solution is misleading, showing that this construction is sensitive to discourse and real world factors, hinging on the problematic status of an indefinite Undergoer. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

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