Voice and information structure in Surinamese Javanese
This paper examines the grammatical voice system of Indonesian and Surinamese Javanese speakers. Alongside Javanese, the Surinamese speakers also speak Sranantongo and Dutch. Studying the use of voice in both speaker groups shows that it depends both on givenness and animacy of arguments. This interacts with the speaker group. The Surinamese speakers were found to be less discourse-dependent, due to general language contact processes as well as convergence to Dutch and Sranantongo.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Voice
- 2.1Voice in Javanese
- 2.1.1Morphology
- 2.1.2Information structure
- 2.2Voice in Dutch and Sranantongo
- 2.3Research questions and predictions
- 3.Methodology
- 3.1Participants
- 3.2Stimuli and procedure
- 3.3Transcription and analysis
- 4.Results
- 4.1Overall results and modeling
- 4.2Givenness and group
- 4.3Givenness and animacy
- 5.Discussion and conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
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References