In this talk, Victor will present his postdoc project 'Reduced Voice Systems in Bunun'. He will outline the main research questions and aims of the project and present some preliminary results.

Popular Scientific Summary 
The purpose of this project is to document the organization of transitive clauses in three varieties of Bunun (Austronesian: Taiwan), Takituduh, Takbanuaz och Isbukun. Transitive clauses contain at least a verb, subject and object, with considerable variation across languages for the grammatical features identifying and organizing these constituents. Many Austronesian languages exhibit the so-called Austronesian Voice System, a typologically unique pattern for clause organization. However, in the different varieties of Bunun, this system is in a process of collapsing, impacting the structure of verbs and the overall organization of transitive clauses. This project will document how the system is collapsing in the different varieties and any differences between them. This will be done by conducting linguistic fieldwork. This entails working closely with the language communities and record their language during elicitation sessions, which includes asking participants to describe visual stimulus and translating sentences in the target language. Documenting this cross-linguistically very unusual grammatical system in the different varieties of Bunun will contribute to our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of linguistic diversity, and it will further our understanding of grammatical change. More importantly, this project contains important linguistic documentation work of endangered minority languages as all varieties of Bunun are at the risk of becoming extinct.