Passive typology - the case link

The passive constructions systems in West Austronesian Languages are classified in a kind of chronological order in the multy-passive, the multy-transitive, the person-marked and non-morphological.

1990

1992

Four working papers from the 1992 Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota session, are presented. The first, "English Borrowing in Thai as Reflected in Thai Journalistic Texts," by James Kapper, looks at patterns of the influence of the English language on Thai. It is concluded that English has permeated Thai culture and society deeper than the level of the specialized bilinguals who introduced many of the loan words. "Preposed and Postposed Adverbials in English," by Stephen H. Levinsohn, describes the differences in meaning resulting from placing adverbial clauses before or after the main verb in an English sentence. In "The Role of Language in the Dissolution of the Soviet Union," by David F. Marshall, the dynamics of multiple languages and cultures, ethnic mobilization, and the dissolution of the USSR are explored. It is proposed that government policy concerning multilingualism was less to blame for ethnic tensions than Russian ethnocentrism. "Tone in Komo," by John Paul Thomas, is an analysis of sound patterns in Komo, a sub-Bantu language, focusing on tonal patterns. Rules and processes for each of three strata of tonal processes is outlined. (MSE)

Senri Ethnological Studies, 2012

This paper focuses on the optionality of ergative marking pronouns in Austronesian languages, and discusses some morphosyntactic developments that took place in association with the optional ergative marking. First, it will point out that, in a system which is commonly found in western Austronesian languages, a transitive sentence occurs in which the use of an ergative pronoun is obligatory, even when the agent of the event need not be expressed. It is assumed that such was also the system of their commonly shared ancestral language, Proto-Extra Formosan. Several developments have taken place in some of the daughter languages that are considered to result from this situation, including the emergence of optional ergative marking. These developments are examined. The second half of the paper deals with optional ergative marking and related morphosyntactic developments. In some Austronesian languages, it is found that an ergative clitic pronoun indicating the agent of a transitive sentence optionally alternates with a verb formative which marks passive. A diachronic examination of such interaction between ergative and passive sheds light on the conditions whereby optional ergative marking emerges and how the phenomenon is formalized to develop into a new sentence structure. Mechanisms of the change and possible motivations for each stage of the change are provided, as well as examples from some of the languages in which optional ergative clitic pronouns are observed.

… historical linguistics and culture history: A …, 2009

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics offers comprehensive coverage of the history of linguistics in a single volume and will serve as an introduction to the understanding of countless topics within the history of linguistics. This project began immediately after I had completed The Western Classical Tradition in Linguistics (Allan 2010a), which contains pretty much all I wanted to write on that subject; but even on topics within the history of linguistics that I covered in that book, there are other perspectives to be presented and, on many matters, much greater expertise than mine to be tapped. In addition, there are the non-western traditions to consider. So the present volume was conceived as a book that would make a significant contribution to the historiography of linguistics on a very wide range of topics. Thirty-four chapters, many covering a variety of issues, were commissioned from scholars who are expert in the field outlined in the title for each chapter. The size of the book necessarily favors concision over-expansiveness, but there is a vast bibliography pointing to sources for further inquiry in all the fields covered in the book for readers wishing to pursue a special interest.

2021

This paper proposes a reconstruction of subject marking in Proto-Austronesian (PAn). I depart from previous approaches in not reconstructing nominative case, per se. Rather, I propose that subjects in PAn surfaced as bare DPs, and the case markers that are reflected in present day Formosan and Philippine languages resulted from later innovations. The marking with initial /k-/ that appears widely on subjects projected from common nominals originated as a topic marker *k-in PAn. In contrast to this, case-marking on personal nominals like names and pronouns derives from the PAn locative preposition *i. The preposition was used in differential object marking of personal nominal absolutives in the newly innovated ergative clause type in a daughter of PAn, Proto-Ergative Austronesian. The preposition further grammaticalized into a determiner and subsequently into the marker of [PERSON] in PEAn's daughter Proto-Nuclear Austronesian. The person marker i-is ubiquitously reflected in case markers in Nuclear Austronesian languages. This analysis additionally accounts for the fact that nominative marking with a reflex of *i is not found in Rukai dialects. Proto-Rukai retained the accusative alignment of PAn and consequently did not have ergative clauses with nominative objects. Rukai dialects do have strategies for differential object marking, but this is found only with non-nominative objects. * My Rukai field data was collected with support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (JS015-A-12),