Mar
Forskarseminariet i Lingvistik: Victor Bogren Svensson
Reduction and Syncretism in the Takituduh Bunun Voice System
This paper presents evidence from original fieldwork for reduction and syncretism the in Takituduh Bunun Voice System (Austronesian: Taiwan), where a subset of the verbal lexicon lacks an expected Patient Voice (PV) verb form (-un), with the function instead being fulfilled by the Locative Voice (LV) form (-an), while LV still retains its prototypical function of marking a locative clause pivot. In a list of approximately 200 transitive verbs, the same pattern is attested across different verb classes, semantic categories, degrees of transitivity, and phonological contexts, illustrated using six verbs in (1a-c) across different semantic and transitivity categories, where the verbs to the right lack an expected PV form. In the current list, approximately 30% of the verbs lack an expected LV form.
1a. Perception: tan’aun/tan’aan ‘hear’ ---/sadu’an ‘see’
1b. Physical Impact: ludaqun/ludaqan ‘hit’ ---/lintauzan ‘push’
1c. Movement: sinapun/sinapan ‘chase’ ---/kantulunan ‘follow’
Since this pattern is attested across different parts of the verbal lexicon, the emergent pattern appears to be that of two inflectional classes, here tentatively named PV/LV-verbs and LV-verbs. The syncretic pattern is illustrated below, where one set of verbs retain all four voice forms, while a subset of the verbal lexicon is reduced to a three-way voice system, although the function remains the same for both types of verbs, with the morpheme -an fulfilling the function of both LV and PV for verbs that lack the morpheme -un.
PV/LV-Verbs | LV-Verbs | |
Agent Voice | M- | M- |
‘Patient’ Voice | -un | -an |
Locative Voice | -an | -an |
Circumstantial Voice | is- | is- |
About the event:
Location: H402, online: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/63263453894
Contact: Sandra.Debreslioskaling.luse