NAV and individuation of patients

Hopper and Thompson (1980) hypothesize that the discourse transitivity is manifested largely via the individuation of patients. It is then followed that we may resort to certain properties of the patient argument of a clause in order to investigate the potential relationship between voice and how speakers view this particular argument.

To state more explicitly, the properties that we will look at include referentiality and definiteness, both of which specify how a noun phrase is conceived of and are independent of each other. According to Hopper and Thompson (1980), a noun phrase

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is considered referential if the speaker is able to single out a referent denoted by the phrase; however, the noun is considered non-referential if the speaker does not mean to refer to any particular referent in any possible worlds. On the other hand, definiteness can be expressed by means of a definite article that tags along the noun phrase. The following are three combinatory types⁵¹ derived from the two parameters, with English examples.

Type 1: [+referential, +definite], e.g., ‘I hit the dog sitting over there with a stick.’

Type 2: [+referential, -definite], e.g., ‘I hit a dog with a stick.’

Type 3: [-referential, -definite], e.g., ‘I want to marry a girl (to get married).’

Unfortunately, the article system in Kanakanavu is not as sophisticated as in English, since few, if any, definite/indefinite articles are found in this language. As a result, here we may only make a judgment of which type the patient argument belongs to with respect to the occurrence of demonstrative words (e.g., iisi ‘this’ and iisua

‘that’) and perhaps in a more roundabout way, to the translation.

Before investigating the Kanakanavu data from our corpus, we may first look at a set of elicited sentences that yield a referential and definite pattern as expected.

Below are the examples of each voice type.

(78) Agent voice

a. te=ku k<um>a-kuun tammi FUT=1SG.NOM Ca<AV>-eat sweet.potato

‘I will eat sweet potatoes.’

b. k<um>a-kuun=ku tammi Ca<AV>-eat=1SG.NOM sweet.potato

‘I eat sweet potatoes. / I am eating sweet potatoes.’

51 A fourth type, [-referential, +definite], is considered non-existent, and is thus excluded here.

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(79) Patient voice

kuun-un=maku tammi eat-PV=1SG.GEN sweet.potato

‘I will eat the sweet potatoes. / I am eating the sweet potatoes.’

(80) Instrumental voice

si-kuun=maku tammi ’arating iisi IV-eat=1SG.GEN sweet.potato chopstick this

‘I use these chopsticks to eat sweet potatoes.’

In sentence (78), which is AV-marked, the patient argument is interpreted as having the [-referential, -definite] feature. This sentence indicates that the speaker will perform the action of eating sweet potatoes, without implying any pragmatically salient role of tammi ‘sweet potatoes’. What makes the case even clearer is the sentence (78a), which denotes that the speaker is one who eats sweet potatoes (as opposed to those who do not). Example (78b), in contrast, does not place a pragmatic emphasis on the patient argument, but it rather refers to the event as a whole.

On the contrary, the patient argument of a PV clause, as in sentence (79), often shows the [+referential, +definite] feature. To put it simply, the speaker has some specific referent(s) of the patient tammi on the mind, and thus, he/she is eating perhaps the sweet potatoes at their sight, or the sweet potatoes which are being talked about. To summarize, the patient argument of a PV clause seems to have a higher referentiality and higher definiteness, since the speaker is talking about some specific referent(s) of the noun phrase.

If we look at other NAV clauses, like the one in (80), it becomes evident that the grammatical subject ’arating ‘chopsticks’, namely the argument triggered by the voice affix, is high in referentiality and definiteness. Kanakanavu speakers prefer IV

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clauses with a demonstrative in the instrumental nominal phrase, and sentence (81) is thus interpreted as more natural with iisi ‘this’ modifying ’arating ‘chopsticks’ than the one without a demonstrative. It arouses our interests because the features of high referentiality and high definiteness are no longer retained on the part of the object patient argument, but instead on the applied patient, a.k.a., the grammatical subject.

The case of IV clauses, therefore, shows a situation where the grammatical subject—the instrument used to carry out the action—is meant to have a specific referent on the speaker’s mind.

Having examined the elicited data, now we may further ask a question: Will a similar pattern prevail in the texts from our corpus? To answer this, we need to turn to the corpus data now and find out a possible connection between voice types and the referentiality/definiteness of the patient argument. Here, the eight texts are chosen for an illustration. See the examples taken from the corpus.

(81) From Daily Life

[...] er u masiin sua umi ia acecu ni-pu'a-a.

FIL FIL now NOM plum TOP already PFV.PV-buy-REL

‘Now the plums have already been sold out.’

the plums> [+Referential, +Definite]

(82) From Life

[…] u avu-un manu c<um>a-cancu.

FIL carry.on.shoulder-PV child Ca<AV>seedling

‘(I) transplanted seedlings, child being carried on the back.’

children > [+Referential, -Definite]

(83) From Hunting Taboos

[…] aririan uh sisiin.

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AV.listen FIL type.of.bird

‘…(they would) listen to bird’s sound.’

bird’s sound > [-Referential, -Definite]

The grammatical subject in (81), namely umi ‘plums’, refers to the plums that have been mentioned earlier in the discourse, hence [+Referential, +Definite].

Example (82), which is PV-marked, involves a grammatical subject—manu ‘children’, that in fact denotes the child of the speaker, but it is not definite since the noun phrase is not translated with the definite article. The last example in (83), on the contrary, has a patient argument (sisiin ‘sound of bird’) that is neither referential nor definite. This is due to the fact that the noun phrase sisiin simply means any sound made by the birds. The result yielded from the corpus is given in Table 4.3.

Table 4.3 Voice types and referentiality/denifiteness of patient in Kanakanavu⁵²

R/D type AV NAV

[+R, +D] 29 (30.9%) 29 (76.3%)

[+R, -D] 5 (5.3%) 3 (7.9%)

[-R, -D] 60 (63.8%) 6 (15.8%)

Total 94 38

From the table above, we are able to tell that the patient of an AV clause is around 65% probable to be non-referential and indefinite, while the one of a PV clause is more than 75% likely to be referential and definite. This result parallels with the intuitive interpretation of the elicited sentences and with our general understanding of the individuation of the patient argument in AV and NAV types respectively.

52 To calculate the referentiality and definiteness, we only consider clauses with two arguments, whether either or both arguments have a zero anaphora, since it is the comparison between the agent and the patient that we intend to investigate.

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A complication arises when an argument may be interpreted as either definite or indefinite, since, without any overt marking of articles, the interpretation depends largely on the context. Consider the excerpt from our corpus below.

(84) te=ci=kia er er pocu'u kanavunavu FUT=COS=1SG.NOM FIL FIL clean.out Ma.bamboo

‘I’m going to clean the Ma Bamboo.’ (from ‘Daily Life’)

In the above sentence, the patient kanavunavu ‘Ma bamboo’ may refer to some particular bamboos that have come to the speaker’s mind, hence definite, though without any definite articles. However, it is possible to interpret this noun phrase as some indefinite entities that the speaker is about to clean.

Despite the ambiguities of the possible interpretations, it is justifiable that speakers intuitively conceive of the patient subject of a NAV clause as an argument which is highly referential and definite. The patient of an AV clause, in contrast, usually does not correlate clearly to referentiality and/or definiteness, since the patient argument may be likely (around 30%) to be referential and definite, too.

Now that we have seen the individuation of patient, in the sense of referentiality and definiteness, is reflected particularly in NAV but not in AV clauses, the next subsection will further examine the last criterion of discourse ergativity.