Austronesian alignment
From Wikipedia, the free 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 Formosa, Borneo, and Madagascar, and has been reconstructed for the ancestral Proto-Austronesian language.
Whereas most languages have two voices which are used to track referents in discourse, an 'active' transitive voice and a 'passive' (referred to as 'antipassive' in the case of ergative languages) intransitive voice (optionally with a noun phrase like by all in his call was heard by all), in prototypical Philippine languages the two voices are both transitive. One of the two Philippine voices is similar in form to the active voice of ergative languages, while the other is similar to the active voice of accusative languages. These perform functions similar to the active and passive/antipassive voices, respectively, in other languages.
The ergative-like Philippine voice has in the past often been called the "passive"; however, this terminology is misleading and is now disfavored, though no substitute has 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 voice systems can be contrasted as follows:
| Morphological alignment | Case of basic intransitive clause | Cases of basic transitive clause | Cases of the secondary voice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accusative (e.g. most European languages) |
nominative (same case as Agent) |
Active nominative (Agent) |
Passive nominative (Patient) |
| accusative (Patient) | optional oblique case (Agent) | ||
| Ergative (e.g. most Australian languages) |
absolutive (same case as Patient) |
Active absolutive (Patient) |
Antipassive absolutive (Agent) |
| ergative (Agent) | optional oblique case (Patient) | ||
| Austronesian | "nominative" (the case common to the two transitive voices) |
Patient-trigger "nominative" (Patient) |
Agent-trigger "nominative" (Agent) |
| "ergative" (Agent) | "accusative" (Patient) |
The Philippine cases are only approximately equivalent to their namesakes in other languages ("nominative" could as easily have been called "absolutive", for example), and are therefore placed in scare quotes. 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 placed the verb first, the "nominative" phrase last. The voice (patient- or agent-trigger) was indicated by an affix to the verb (suffix -ən and infix -um-, respectively). In modern Philippine languages, the practical effect of this is rather like the difference between the use of a and the in English.
| *ka’ən-ən | na | manuk | a | wai |
| eat-(patient trigger) | (ergative) | chicken | (nominative) | 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 | (nominative) | 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 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 nominative case in the location of the action rather than a participant:
| *ka’ən-an | na | manuk | a | kahiw |
| eat-(location trigger) | (ergative) | chicken | (nominative) | tree |
- 'The chicken is eating in the tree', or 'The tree is being eaten in by the chicken'
