Corpus linguistic and experimental studies on the meaning-preserving hypothesis in Indonesian voice alternations

Journal article

In Balinese, a noncanonical passive construction exists alongside the canonical passive. This noncanonical form shares some properties with the canonical passive but differs in key ways, particularly in expressing an unintentional agent. This study explores this construction, similar to the English get passive, by compiling a corpus of Balinese passives from storybooks and conducting grammaticality judgment tests. Results reveal that the ka- passive is incompatible with agent-oriented adverbials and purposive clauses, and contrasts semantically with the -a passive, which marks accomplishments. The ka- passive, associated with achieved states in Austronesian languages, often appears as a high-register or polite form, suggesting its (non)canonical status is gradient due to language change

Authors: Rajeg, IM; Rajeg, GPW; Arka, IW

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Linguistics Vanguard: A Multimodal Journal for the Language Sciences
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 367-382
• Publication date: 2022-01-28
• DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2020-0104
• EISSN: 2199-174X
• ISSN: 2199-174X
• Language: English
• Keywords: Verb; Psychology; Meaning (existential); Linguistics; Computer science; Alternation (linguistics); Grammar; Sentence; Indonesian