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Part of
Austronesian Undressed: How and why languages become isolating
Edited by David Gil and Antoinette Schapper
[Typological Studies in Language 129] 2020
► pp. 213–252

Chapter 4
Voice and bare verbs in Colloquial Minangkabau

| The University of Western Australia

Minangkabau is an Austronesian language spoken primarily in West Sumatra. Previous studies of voice and morphosyntax, which have largely relied on elicitation-based methodology, suggest that Minangkabau can be characterised as an Indonesian-type language since its active/passive voice system resembles that of Malay/Indonesian. This study, which makes use of a corpus of naturalistic Minangkabau data, finds that the use of bare verbs (i.e. verbs that are unmarked for voice) is pervasive in informal and conversational contexts. Morphological underspecification for voice in the naturalistic data suggests that Colloquial Minangkabau is a distinct variety. The apparent optional nature of voice marking in Colloquial Minangkabau indicates that its function is primarily semantic and conceptual, and that Colloquial Minangkabau is better characterised as having a Sundic-type voice system.

Keywords: Minangkabau, voice, bare verbs, Sundic-type voice system, Indonesian-type voice system
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Standard Minangkabau and Colloquial Minangkabau
    • 2.1A focus on the standard
    • 2.2A new focus: Naturalistic data
    • 2.3Standard and Colloquial Minangkabau: Formal and functional differences
  • 3.Voice in Standard Minangkabau
    • 3.1An Indonesian-type language with a pivot function
    • 3.2Active voice
      • 3.2.1Canonical maN- clauses
      • 3.2.2Non-canonical maN clauses
    • 3.3Passive voice
      • 3.3.1Canonical di clauses
      • 3.3.2Non-canonical di clauses
    • 3.4The P2 construction
      • 3.4.1The Standard Minangkabau P2 construction
      • 3.4.2Bare verbs and the P2 construction
  • 4.Voice in Colloquial Minangkabau
    • 4.1‘Sundic-type’ voice
    • 4.2Bare verbs
    • 4.3Bare verbs: Problems and explanations
      • 4.3.1What is the function of voice marking in Colloquial Minangkabau?
      • 4.3.2How are semantic roles determined?
      • 4.3.3Associational semantics
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.129.04cro
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