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.