Pattern 5c. Triadic s-V transitive
THE MAIN ISSUES ADDRESSED IN THIS STUDY
3.2 A query about a full-fledged four-way voice marking system
It is widely known that many Philippine-type languages make a four-way distinction in subject, also known as ‘focus’ or ‘topic’ in the literature; it is also often claimed that the semantic role of the subject is marked by the affixes on the verb (French 1988). Thus, in Squliq Atayal, m(-)/-m-/ (called AV or AF) signals the actor of an action as the subject, -un (PV or PF) the patient of an action as the subject, -an (LV or LF) the location of an action as the subject, and s- (CV or RF, with IV or IF and BV or BF included) the instrument or beneficiary of an action as the subject. They are illustrated in (3.1) ((Liu 2004:27 (29)-(33)), original transcription, gloss, and translation):
(3.1)
a. m-aniq qulih qu’ tali’
AV-eat fish NOM Tali ‘Tali’ eats fish.’
b. niq-un na’ tali’ qu’ qulih qasa eat-PV OBL Tali NOM fish that ‘That fish is eaten by Tali.’
c. niq-an na’ tali’ qulih qu’ ngasal qasa eat-LV OBL Tali fish NOM house that ‘That house is the place where Tali eats [ate] fish.’
d. s-qaniq na’ tali’ qulih qu’ qway
IV-eat OBL Tali fish NOM chopsticks ‘The chopsticks were used by Tali to eat fish.’
e. s-qaniq na’ tali’ qulih qu’ sayun.
IV-eat OBL Tali fish NOM Sayun ‘Sayun is the person for whom Tali ate fish.’
In (3.1a), the subject tali’ ‘Tali’’ is the actor of the event associated with the verb affixed with m-, i.e., maniq ‘eat’. In (3.1b), the subject qulih qasa (or qulih qasa’) ‘that fish’ is assigned with the role of patient, and the main verb is the PV form of qaniq ‘eat’, i.e., niq-un. In (3.1c), ngasal qasa (or ngasal qasa’) ‘that house’ denotes a location, which is selected as the subject of the clause by the LV verb niq-an ‘eat’. In (3.1d), the subject qway ‘chopsticks’ is an instrument normal, and the main verb is prefixed with s-. In (3.1e), the subject Sayun is the beneficiary, and the s- form of qaniq ‘eat’, i.e., s-qaniq
‘eat’, is used.
The four-way system for subject choice is also found in other Philippine-type languages, but different variants for each voice/focus marker are used in different languages. (3.2) and (3.3) respectively illustrate the use for four voices/focuses in Paiwan and Tagalog.
(3.2)
a. (Wouk and Ross 2002:20 (1d), original transcription, gloss and translation) t<m>kl a qaa
<AV>drink SPEC stranger
‘the stranger will drink (something)’
b. (Wouk and Ross 2002:20 (1b), original transcription, gloss and translation)
tkl-n a vaua
drink-PV SEPC wine
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c. (Wouk and Ross 2002:20 (1c), original transcription, gloss and translation) tkl-an a kaksan
drink-LV SPEC kitchen
‘the kitchen will be drunk in’ (‘s/he/they will drink it/them in the kitchen’) d. (Wouk and Ross 2002:20 (1a), original transcription, gloss and translation)
si-tkl a kupu
CV-drink SPEC cup
‘the cup will be drunk with’ (‘s/he/they will drink in/them from a cup’)
In (3.2a), the subject of the verb taking the AV infix <m> is an actor; in (3.2b), the PV suffix -n is to signal a patient subject; in (3.2c), the LV suffix –an is to specify a location subject; in (3.2d), the subject is an instrument, and the main verb is marked with the instrumental voice marker s-.
(3.3)
a. (Schachter 1976:494-495, original transcription, gloss and translation) Mag-alis ang babae ng bigas sa sako
AV-take.out SPEC woman NPIV rice LOC sack para sa bata
for LOC child
‘The woman will take some rice out of a/the sack for a/the child’
b. (Schachter 1976:494-495, original transcription, gloss and translation) A-alis-in ng babae ang bigas sa sako
DUR-take.out-PV GEN woman SPEC rice LOC sack para sa bata
for LOC child
‘A/the woman will take the rice out of a/the sack for a/the child’
c. (Schachter 1976:494-495, original transcription, gloss and translation) A-alis-an ng babae ng bigas ang
DUR-take.out-LV GEN woman NPIV rice SPEC sako para sa bata
sack for LOC child
‘A/the woman will take the rice out of the sack for a/the child’
d. (Schachter 1976:494-495, original transcription, gloss and translation) Ipag-alis ng babae ng bigas sa sako
CV-take.out GEN woman NPIV rice LOC sack ang bata
SPEC child
‘A/the woman will take the rice out of a/the sack for the child’
Likewise, in Tagalog, the subject in (3.3a) taking the AV prefix mag- is an actor, in (3.3b) taking the PV suffix -in is a patient, in (3.3c) taking the LV suffix -an is a location, and in (3.3d) taking the CV prefix ipag- is a circumstantial participant (for the case here, a beneficiary).
Based on (3.1) to (3.3), a summary of the four-way voice marking system of the aforementioned languages can be displayed below:
Table 3.1: Four-way voice systems of three Philippine-type languages
Voice typeLanguage
AV PV LV CV
Squliq m- -un -an s-
Paiwan <m> -n -an si-
Tagalog mag- -in -an ipag-
Thematic roles of subject Actor Patient Location Instrument or beneficiary
However, not every verb in Philippine-type languages exhibits such a full-fledged
‘paradigm’ as displayed in Table 3.1.
Crosslinguistically, the focus/voice attrition phenomenon is observed in many of the Austronesian languages (Ross and Teng (2005); Shibatani (2005); S. Huang (2005)).
Some languages exhibit a three-way voice/focus system, such as Saisiyat (M. M. Yeh
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2003)16, Mansaka (a Central Philippine language of Mindanao; Thomas (1958))17; some others, like Kavalan (Hsieh 2007)18, and Bilaan (South Mindanao; Dean (1958)), display a two-way voice/focus system. From the perspective of verbs, not every verb in Philippine-type languages carry a full set of voice/focus affixes as displayed in Table 3.1. Instead, the number of verbs filling all the four slots in the table is low, as H. Huang and S. Huang (2007) have shown for Tsou.
What H. Huang and S. Huang found is that, in Tsou, different verb types prefer different non-actor voice forms to code subject; for instance, most emotion verbs have as their non-actor subjects nominals that function as stimulus and cause/beneficiary, encoded by PV and BV form, respectively; in addition to using BV form to signal beneficiary subject, the PV form of action verbs like at’c ‘raise; take care’ and cmiy
‘aim at’ is the only non-actor voice marker to encode a patient/goal subject; in contrast, another type of action verbs like mtok ‘throw’ and to’so ‘toss’employ their LV form to code a patient/goal subject; sociative verbs (e.g., noteuyuyunu ‘gather’ and tousvusvutu
‘discuss’) employ their BV forms to express non-actor subjects. H. Huang and S. Huang conclude that, in Tsou, various verb types allow for different voice constructions.
Similar observations were also made for Tagalog in McFarland (1976) about forty years ago. McFarland identified numbers of Tagalog affix-alternation classes, such as the mag-/i-/-an class with abot ‘hand to’, bigay ‘give’, buhos ‘pour’, etc. as examples there, the mag-/-in/-an class with alis ‘remove’, alala ‘bring’, hati’ ‘divide’ etc.
16 As stated in M. M. Yeh (2003:18-19), there are only three types of focus in Saisiyat, namely, AV, PV and I/BV; as for the LV marker -an, it is left for marking a location subject limitedly appearing in nominalizations.
17 In Mansaka, the subject signaled by referential focus covers location and instrument.
18 As pointed out in Hsieh (2007:12), for two reasons, Kavalan exhibits only a two-way focus system, i.e., AV and LV. First is regarded to focus attrition in LV and PV; that is, the LV marker -an lost its original verbal function, but is instead used to either mark a nominal predicate in equational sentences or carry the function of the PV. Second is for cease of using the IV/BV marker ti- by speakers nowadays. However, other Formosanists (Lee 1997, Chang 1997, 2000) argue for the indeed presence of the IV/BV marker ti- in the focus system of the language. But, for the sake of update, we adopt Hsieh’s analysis here.
included, the mag-/-an class where balik ‘return’, dasal ‘pray’, ingat ‘careful about’ and so on are subsumed under, and the ma-/i- class covering haying ‘make public’, kuwento
‘tell’, tabus ‘take out’ etc. But, McFarland didn’t undertake a classification of verbs into types the way H. Huang and S. Huang (2007) did.
Lexical gaps of verbal affixation on non-actor voice form also exist in the voice system of Squliq Atayal. For example, non-actor subjects of consumption verbs like nbuw ‘drink’, qaniq ‘eat’, and qom ‘swallow’ mostly occur in a PV clause; likewise, perceptual verbs like kita’ ‘see’, pung ‘hear; listen’, and sok ‘smell’, and their non-actor subjects are more likely to occur in a LV clause. Table 3.2 and Table 3.3 respectively show the occurrences of four voice types for qaniq ‘eat’ and kita’ ‘see’ based on a corpus comprised of both narratives and conversations.19
Table 3.2: Occurrences of four voice types for qaniq ‘eat’ in the corpus
AV PV LV CV
Voice Type
Genre maniq niq-un niq-an s-qaniq
Narrative 13 6 0 0
Conversation 32 9 0 0
Total (Percentage) 45 (75%) 15 (25%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)
Table 3.3: Occurrences of four voice types for kita’ ‘see’ in the corpus
AV PV LV CV
Voice type
Genre mita’ kt-on20 ktan s-kita’
Narrative 10 0 23 6
Conversation 7 0 17 0
Total (Percentage) 17 (27%) 0 40 (63.5%) 6 (9.5%)
19 The two different genres of the corpus in Table 3.2 and Table 3.3, narrative and conversation, run to 78’15” and 112’38” respectively.
20 According to Egerod (1965:269), when a verb root ends in /a’/, the PV marker -un takes -on, which is a
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In Table 3.2, no single instance of the -an form of qaniq ‘eat’ is found in the corpus;
and in Table 3.3, no single instance of the -un form of the verb kita’ ‘see’ is found in the corpus. A tentative voice system for the two verbs types is given in Table 3.4:
Table 3.4: A tentative voice marking for verbs for perceptual and consuming verb types
Voice typeVerb type
AV PV LV CV
Consumption verbs --- ---
Perceptual verbs ---
As easily noted from in Table 3.4, either qaniq ‘eat’ or kita’ ‘see’ must have a respective AV form, but their respective one or two types of UV voice forms are likely absent from the apparatus of the two lexical items. Virtually, different voice markers of a verb may either signal different TAM information, (e.g., the PV form of kita’ ‘see’, kt-on, is used in an irrealis event only), or exhibits subtle semantic difference in the interpretation of non-actor subjects in the same category (e.g., the LV form of nbuw
‘drink’, nbwan, is used to specify an edible object from a part-whole viewpoint). The challenge then is to have a systematic understanding of the patterning of voice forms of the verbs in the language that reflects not only the mind of language user, but also the morphosyntax of the language. Before taking up that challenge, we turn our attention to previous studies that helps us straighten up the tangles in the asymmetries in voices in Squliq Atayal.