Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
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Avery D. Andrews
(but not actors or directionals) are normally understood as indefinite. This is an indication that the pivot is associated with a topic-like pragmatic concept. The first analyses of these constructions treated the ang-phrase as an ordi- nary subject, and the non-ap (actor-pivot) forms essentially as passives (see Bloomfield (1917) and other treatments discussed by Kroeger (1993:19)), and such analyses have also been proposed by generative authors such as Schwartz (1976) and Bell (1976) for other Philippine languages. The ap form (111a) is taken as the primary form with the actor as subject, the others as passives, with the actor ‘demoted’ from the subject relation, and some other np serving as subject. That the pivot bears a subject-like grammatical relation is made clear by the fact that it is targetted by certain principles which tend to target subjects in var- ious languages. Schachter (1976, 1977) presents three of these: relativization, quantifier launching, and an inability to appear as something whose existence is asserted in an existential sentence. We illustrate the first two. Tagalog relative clauses take the form of sentences with ellipsed pivot. The ellipsed pivot is understood to be the head np that the clause is modifying. Hence to relativize on an actor, one uses an ap verb; to relativize on an object, an op (object-pivot) verb: 22 (112) a. Matalino ang lalaki-ng b[um]asa ng diyaryo intelligent piv man-link [ap]-read obj newspaper ‘The man who read a newspaper is intelligent’ b. Interesante ang diyaryo-ng b[in]asa- ng lalaki interesting piv newspaper-link [perf]-read-op act man ‘The newspaper that the man read is interesting’ (113) a. *Matalino ang lalaki-ng b[in]asa- ang diyaryo intelligent piv man-link [perf]-read-op piv newspaper ‘The man who read a newspaper is intelligent’ b. *Interesante ang diyaryo-ng b[um]asa ang lalaki interesting piv newspaper-link [ap]-read piv man ‘The newspaper that the man read is interesting’ The -ng suffix in these examples, glossed link, is an element often called a ‘linker’, which has various functions in the grammar: here it is regularly placed on a word in an np immediately before a relative clause modifying that np. In (112), we see that the pivot can be relativized upon; in (113) we see that non- pivots cannot be relativized upon. Relativization therefore targets the pivot. 22 Some of the affixes are infixed; these are enclosed in square brackets, in the forms and glosses, rather than being separated from their stems by dashes. The major functions of the noun phrase 205 The other pivot-targetting process is a ‘Quantifier Launching’ phenomenon. Tagalog quantifiers normally occur within the np they modify, but, for some speakers, the quantifier lahat may also be placed in an adverbial particle position directly after the verb (Schachter and Otanes (1972:147–8)). Such a ‘floated quantifier’ may modify only the pivot, not a non-pivot: (114) a. -su-sulat lahat ang mga bata ng mga liham ap-fut -write all piv pl child obj pl letter ‘All the children will write letters’ b. Su-sulat-in lahat ng mga bata ang mga liham fut -write-op all act pl child piv pl letter ‘The/some children will write all the letters’ not ‘All the children will write the letters’ The pivot thus functions as target for a number of grammatical processes, indicating that it is the bearer of a grammatical relation. Although the phenomena of (112–14) show that the pivot has a subject-like grammatical relation, there are problems with treating the non-ap forms as passives. The op (object-pivot) and dp (directional-pivot) forms are extremely common, rather than being relatively rare, as is typically the case with passives. Furthermore, they are not morphologically more complex than the putatively primary ap forms, but merely have different affixes, not additional ones. But a much more serious problem with the passive analysis was first delin- eated by Schachter (1976, 1977), and then substantially reinforced by Kroeger (1993). Schachter observed that the actor showed a substantial number of prop- erties that are characteristic of subjects, regardless of whether or not it was the pivot: he cited three subject properties for non-pivot actors, and three sub- ject properties for non-actor pivots (an actor pivot would have all six). Later work shows that these claims need to be qualified substantially. For example Andrews (1985:143–4), to be reviewed just below, showed that two of the sup- posed subject properties did not in fact discriminate between grammmatical relations in Tagalog. But on the other hand, Kroeger (1993) showed conclu- sively that the non-pivot actor is a core argument rather than an oblique, which is what a passivized a would be, decisively ruling against the passive analysis, and confirming Schachter’s essential insight, since an oblique cannot be a core argument. An alternative to the passive analysis which has sometimes been proposed is the ergative analysis (Gerdts (1988); T. S. Payne (1982)), in which the op forms rather than the ap forms are taken as basic, and the ap as antipassives. But this analysis faces essentially the same difficulties as the passive analysis, but in a slightly different form: on the one hand the ap forms are too common to be plausibly regarded as antipassives, and, on the other hand, non-pivot |
