Syntactic description of a language with unique patterns of symmetrical voice alternations

College

Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC College of Education

Document Type

Web Resource

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

The distinction between "Mary kicked the ball" (active voice) and "The ball was kicked by Mary" (passive voice) is an important one for both speakers and linguistic theory. In the active voice the focus is on Mary as the instigator of the kicking. In the passive voice the focus is on the ball, and reference to Mary can even be omitted, as in "The ball was kicked. " A key feature of the active-passive distinction is its asymmetry: the active is the typical way of saying something, while the passive stands out as different, moving the focus away from the person initiating the action and adding "was" and "by" in the passive sentence. Active-passive distinctions have been documented in hundreds of the world's languages, leading many to assume the universality of this construction. However, recently scholars have begun to challenge this assumption, pointing to new data from previously undocumented languages suggesting that symmetrical voice distinctions exist. In other words, neither the active nor passive form is more basic. This project will investigate symmetrical voice in an underdocumented language, Western Subanon (ISO 639-3 suc), which makes even finer distinctions between types of active voice. Such distinctions are different from English in both the symmetry and the gradation of types of active voice. Broader impacts include a public repository of recordings and transcriptions, materials for use by community members and promotion of linguistic sustainability and modern language documentation techniques in the region. Other outcomes include the training of a doctoral student.

The CoPI, a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaii, will document and analyze Western Subanon, an endangered and understudied indigenous minority Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines. While Philippine languages are often taken as prototype examples of symmetrical voice languages, most research has focused on just of a few of the larger languages, such as Tagalog, ignoring the diversity which exists within Greater Central Philippines, a family of nearly one hundred languages. Subanon is unique in distinguishing multiple forms of active voice, the marking of which interacts in complex ways with number, tense, and mood. In order to better understand the factors motivating choice of voice the CoPI will compile a comprehensive collection of recordings of natural language use. These recordings will form the basis for a grammatical description of voice, while also serving the needs of researchers working on related grammatical topics. Given the lack of existing documentation of Subanon, the description of symmetrical voice will be embedded within a reference grammar, thus ensuring that this work is maximally accessible to other researchers. Moreover, in order to better understand the factors motivating choice of voice forms this research will compile a corpus of annotated recordings of natural language, which will be archived and accessible for both researchers and community members. The outcomes of this project will thus provide new data on a little-studied Philippine language while also informing ongoing debates about the nature of symmetrical voice.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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Disciplines

English Language and Literature

Note

Abstract only

Keywords

English language—Voice; English language—Passive voice

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