Voice in Gayo, a language of northern Sumatra (original) (raw)

Austronesian languages are remarkable for their distinctive voice systems. An important sub-group of Austronesian languages are the “Indonesian type” languages spoken in the western part of Indonesia. These languages are characterised by the presence of symmetrical voice systems (Arka 2002; Arka & Ross 2005; Himmelmann 2005), which involve “at least two voice alternations marked on the verb, neither of which is clearly the basic form.” (Himmelmann 2005:3). Indonesian-type languages also generally contain true passive constructions, in which an agentive argument is demoted to oblique status and is thus marked in relation to its active alternant (Arka 2002:3). A number of languages of northern Sumatra feature symmetrical voice systems, but lack true passive constructions. Examples of such languages include Toba Batak (Schachter 1984) and Karo Batak (Woollams 1996). In addition to their more purely voice-like function of indicating the semantic role of the grammatical subject, voice in...