Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 43(3/4): 275-281, 1998
Introduction
DIANE MASSAM
University of Toronto
This volume contains a collection of articles which represent the field of Austronesian generative syntax. Barry Miller and I decided to put together such a
collection upon realizing that there is a fast-growing body of work, much of
it Canadian, which elaborates the contribution that Austronesian languages can
make to theoretical syntax. We feel that this volume represents well the richness
of the area.
Before we turn to a discussion of the articles in this volume, I begin this
introduction with a brief overview of the Austronesian language family. The
Austronesian family includes about 1200 languages and is the most widespread
and numerous language phylum in the world. The area in which the languages
are spoken extends from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Taiwan to New
Zealand, and there are estimated to be almost 300 million Austronesian speakers in
the world. It is believed that the Austronesians originated in South China or Taiwan
about 6000 years ago. The family divides into two groups at the highest level:
Formosan and Proto Malayo-Polynesian. All of the languages discussed in this
volume (in parentheses below) are from the Malayo-Polynesian branch. MalayoPolynesian divides into Western Malayo-Polynesian (Balinese, Malagasy, Muna,
Palauan, Rejang, Selayarese, Tagalog), and Central Eastern, and the latter divides
in turn into Central Malayo-Polynesian and Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Finally,
Eastern Malayo-Polynesian divides into South Halmahera-West New Guinea and
Oceanic (most Micronesian languages, Maori).1
Because of the uniquely widespread and geographically isolated nature of
Austronesian languages, much discussion in the field has concentrated on understanding the historical relations between them, but I will not review this important
Barry Miller and I would like to thank the editor and co-editor of the Canadian Journal
of Linguistics, Anne Rochette and Heather Goad, and the several anonymous reviewers for
their help in the preparation of this collection. Diane Massam's work on this volume has
been supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada (grant 410-97-0493).
1
Thanks to Ed Burstynsky for help with this background information. See Lynch
(1998) and Lyovin (1997) for further details.
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CJL/RCL 43(3/4), 1998
work here (e.g., the work of Robert Blust, Byron Bender, Otto Dahl, Otto Dempwolff, Isidore Dyen, Ross Clark, George Grace, Andrew Pawley, among others).
Synchronic generative work on the languages began to flourish in the 1970s,
notably with the volume Subject and Topic (Li 1976), which included articles
by Ed Keenan, Paul Schachter, Sandra Chung, and Arthur Schwartz on several
Western Malayo-Polynesian languages, such as Tagalog, Indonesian, Malagasy
and Ilocano. Several of the articles in that volume have essentially denned formal
Austronesian syntax in the decades which have followed its publication. In particular, the issue of how to understand the notion subject has been avidly pursued
in languages such as Tagalog, Indonesian, and Malagasy, as well as (somewhat
separately) in the Oceanic Polynesian languages.
In addition to the influence of works such as Subject and Topic, the questions
pursued by Austronesian syntacticians have been shaped by the nature of the
data itself. While, as is natural in such a large language family, there is a vast
amount of variation, there are also certain aspects of the family that recur in
language after language, thus leading linguists in languages as removed from
each other as Paiwan (Formosan) and Maori to pursue topics which are closely
related within syntactic theory (e.g., the work on DP projections and genitive case
by Tang, Chang, and Ho 1996 and Waite 1994). The most prominent question
running through Austronesian studies has been: What are the central organizing
principles of argument structure, that is, what is the relation between thematic
and aspectual roles and surface argument structure and inflection? Other topics
which Austronesian syntacticians have been led to explore include variations in
w/i-structures and in word order, in particular the nature of VSO and VOS word
orders in contrast with SVO (recent examples include Massam, to appear, Miller
1988, Pearson 1996, and Rackowski and Travis, to appear).
The primary argument structure issue in Austronesian languages has been
the nature of the grammatical role subject, beginning with the work in Li (1976).
Schachter (1996) sums up much of this discussion. The central issue is that the
properties commonly associated with subjects are divided between two different
NP types in Tagalog and other Philippine languages (cf. Richards, to appear).
Some (e.g., Kroeger 1991) argue for one or the other NP to be subject, while
others (Guilfoyle, Hung, and Travis 1992) argue that subject properties divide
along the lines of D-structure and S-structure subjects. Much debate has ensued as
to whether Philippine languages are ergative languages (cf. Cooreman et al. 1988;
Blake 1988; Maclaughlan 1996), as has also been debated regarding Indonesian
and Malaysian languages (Hopper 1988; Verhaaar 1988). Schachter (1996) argues
that none of the proposal types can account for all the facts and that subject is a
composite of properties rather than a primitive notion. In Malagasy too, the notion
of subject has been prominent in accounting for the relations between the voice
system and a particular privileged sentence final NP (cf. Guilfoyle, Hung, and
Travis 1992, and for recent discussion, the articles in Paul 1996, and in Pearson
and Paul 1998, among others).
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INTRODUCTION
277
Within this same general issue of argument structure, and more particularly
within the debate regarding ergativity, we also find a constellation of articles
about Polynesian languages, where the question of what constitutes a subject is
also unclear. In some of these languages (e.g., Niuean), a relatively clear ergative
case system appears to co-exist with a syntax organized along accusative lines
(according to Seiter 1980). In other languages in this family (e.g., Maori), an
accusative system is found. One aspect of the debate examines whether the protolanguage was accusative or ergative (cf. Hale 1968; Hohepa 1969; Clark 1976).
Chung and Seiter (1980) attempt to explain the ambiguous nature of grammatical
roles found in modern Niuean by an analysis in which passive sentences were
reanalyzed as ergative. The work of others (Biggs 1974; Sperlich 1994) can be
understood to demonstrate that the ambiguity of subject and object in Polynesian
languages is due to the persistence of the ergative system, claiming that the
primacy of the patient is more deeply rooted in syntactic argument structure than
Seiter (1980) considers it to be. This theme, that objects (in a loose sense)
are primary in Austonesian languages, partnered with the difficulties posed by
Austronesian subjects, makes argument structure an important area of study within
the language family.
Another area where Austronesian languages have offered rich new material
has been the typology of w/i-questions. In this domain, Chung (1982) and Georgopoulos (1985) began the recent discussions with an examination of the role of
resumptive pronoun vs movement strategies in w/i-question formation. This thread
is continued in, for example, Georgopoulos (1991), Chung (1994), Finer (1997),
and Richards (1997). Their work, primarily on Palauan, Chamorro, Selayarese,
and Tagalog, shows that in some languages there is morphological evidence on
the verb or the complementizer of successive cyclic movement, in contrast with
base-generated long distance dependencies.
The themes discussed above are represented in new and interesting ways in
this volume. Richard McGinn contributes new material to w/z-movement studies
in his article on Rejang question formation. He shows that in Rejang the form of
the complementizer reflects the site of extraction and he treats the data within an
enriched ECP which makes reference to the morphological form of the complementizer. Of interest is the approach he takes to the constraint that only subjects
can be extracted, tying it to constraints on indexing between Comp and the extraction site. It is also interesting to note that some of the material treated within
the sub-topic of w/i-question formation can be related to issues of argument structure through the Keenan and Comrie (1977) "NP Accessibility Hierarchy" and
indeed, through the ECP itself, which in part treats subject/object asymmetries.
McGinn's article provides an example of how morphologically overt phenomena
in Austronesian languages can be used to determine aspects of Universal Grammar
which are hard to pin down in some more well-studied languages such as English.
Other articles in this volume also develop the classic themes of Austronesian
syntax. Elizabeth Pearce takes the issues of argument structure and word order
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CJL/RCL 43(3/4), 1998
from the sentential to the nominal level, with her exploration of Maori DP structure.
Her article reveals that inflectional features can be distributed differently across
functional projections in different languages. In Maori, genitive case reflects
thematic structure, with a different case marker for internal and external arguments.
Pearce accounts for this, as well as the fact that an additional structural licensing
constraint appears to hold, by positing a functional head called "Went", which
is compared with nominal functional heads in other languages. The additional
complication that the two types of case markers can co-occur in DPs with verbal
heads is also treated in her article.
Dan Finer's article on Selayarese also treats the structure of DP, with an
examination of relative clauses. He proposes that the relative CP is a complement
of D, rather than an adjunct of the N projection as is commonly assumed. This
allows head movement to legitimately take place from V to D, thus accounting
for the fact that in Selayarese the determiner in relative clauses is an enclitic on
the verb of the relative clause. In this article the familiar Austronesian theme
of ergativity also arises, since Finer shows that the phrasal categories within the
CP seem to follow an ergative pattern even though the arrangement of arguments
in these languages is essentially accusative at the sentential level, in spite of an
ergative marking system.
Lisa Travis also enriches the traditional Austronesian discussion of argument
structure with her article on binding in Balinese (building on Wechsler and Arka's
1998 HPSG account). In her article, she raises the question whether theta-marked
positions should retain a distinct status in syntactic theory, if in fact NPs always
move out of these positions. Her conclusion is that we must continue to represent theta-positions structurally, in spite of the lexical/syntactic redundancy, since
complex binding conditions in Balinese and Malagasy are sensitive to these positions, which she terms T-positions. T-positions include all specifiers of lexical
categories, as well as, in some cases, specifiers of (theta-)binding categories such
as those with Event and Referential variables. Excluded from the class of Tpositions are specifiers of functional heads. Travis' article thus extends work in
Austronesian syntax which seeks to develop a typology of syntactic positions.
Ileana Paul and Carol Georgopoulos present works which also centre on argument structure, in particular on the relation between definiteness and specificity
and argument structure. Paul's article examines a rich set of data on Malagasy
existentials, concentrating primarily on the subset that forces the partitive reading: those existentials with a specific NP. She shows that structural position can
affect interpretation of an NP, thus arguing for the importance of syntax/semantics
relations. Georgopoulos looks at the role of objects in argument structure, noting a general correlation between transitivity and object definiteness. Her article
focuses on Muna, in which this correlation appears to be violated. Instead, she
argues that the morpheme associated with transitivity in some related languages is
related to object focus in Muna. Her article thus can be placed in the body of work
in Austronesian which attempts to understand the apparent primacy of the object.
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INTRODUCTION
279
Mark Hale also takes up the theme of argument structure, and he, similarly
to Georgopoulos, examines mainly the role of objects and specificity. In the first
part of his article he provides an analysis of Micronesian clause structure, which
focuses on the traditional use of the term "verb phrase" in the Micronesian literature
to denote a phrase which excludes the object, but includes subject markers. In the
second part, he provides an interesting history of the languages, using phonological
changes to explain why the family divides into two types — incorporating and
non-incorporating—and why there is an apparent mismatch between semantic
transitivity and syntactic transitivity. His analysis hinges on the analysis of the
Proto-Oceanic suffix *-i, not as a transitivity marker, but as an object agreement
marker (agreeing with specific direct objects). Hale's article spirals us back to
the traditional work on Austronesian languages, since synchronic formal work is
combined with historical cross-linguistic research.
In addition to furthering the understanding of the range of syntactic variation
in Austronesian languages, the articles in this volume also have much to contribute to theoretical issues in the areas of DP structure and semantics, binding,
complementizer selection, and transitivity. It is the intention of the editors that
the articles in this volume will be of relevance to linguists whose main focus does
not lie in Austronesian languages, as well as to those for whom these languages
form the focus of study. Although it might be felt that the study of Austronesian
languages is peripheral to what might be defined as Canadian linguistics, in fact
the study of these languages has been strong in Canada, and linguists from all
regions have been involved in their study. The association devoted to the formal
study of Austronesian languages (AFLA or the Austronesian Formal Linguistics
Association) began in Toronto in 1994 and moved on to Montreal, before becoming an international conference. Finally, among the mosaic of Canadian linguistic
populations, Austronesian speakers form a significant part. Thus, Austronesian
and Canadian linguistics have been and hopefully will continue to be very much
interconnected.
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