Voice in Philippine

Language
Masayoshi Shibatani
 Introduction
 The paper examines the most
controversial subjects in the are of
linguistic typology and universals; namely
the voice system in Philippine languages.
1. typologization of PL
2. the status of subject
 Typologization of PL
 Concerns with the implications of voice phenomenon,
centers on the dominant goal (patient)-topic construction.
> PL are accusative in type
(the goal-topic construction an other non-actor
topic constructions are passive)
> PL are ergative in type
(the goal-topic construction should be identified as
ergative construction, with a concomitant assumption
that the actor (agent)-topic is an antipassive
construction)
> the goal-topic construction is neither passive nor
ergative, and should be treated as a distinct topic
construction)
STATUS OF SUBJECT
> first view assumes that PL have subjects, and that they
are typically marked by the prepositional ang.
> second view holds that the notion of subject is not
applicable to PL, and that ang-marked nominals are to
be treated as topics.

OBJECTIVE
The discussion aims to resolve or at least clarify the
issues mentioned.
 PRELIMINARIES
In Cebuano, personal pronouns have four forms while
common nouns and demonstrative nouns have only two.

Personal si Juan ni Juan kang

names Juan
Personal Siya Iya/niya kaniya ‘he’
pronouns
Common ang bata sa bata sa bata ‘child’
nouns
Demon- kini niini niini ‘this’
stratives
Form Functions Focus categories
Categories (Roles)

Topic (following except

possessor)
Genitive Possesor Actor Focus (AF)
Actor (agent) Goal Focus (GF)
Goal (patient)
Oblique Recipient
Direction Directional Focus
Location
Instrument Instrument Focus
 Form labels, such as topic, genitive and oblique are not
functional categories. They are simple labels for the
surface forms.
 In this paper, “focus” is used in the sense of Schachter
and Otanes (1972), “focus is the feature of a verbal
predicate that determines the semantic relationship
between a predicate verb and its topic.”
 In the focus categories are coalesced a number of
semantic categories.
1. in terms of nominal form (recipient, direction,
location and instrument) take the same surface, the
common noun takes the sa particle
2. in terms of focus marking in the verbal predicate
 (1) Ni-hatag si Juan sa libro sa bata.
TOP GEN OBL
ACTOR GOAL RECIP
‘Juan gave the book to the child’

(2) Gi-hatag ni Juan ang libro sa bata.

GEN TOP OBL
ACTOR GOAL RECIP
‘Juan gave the book to the child.’

In (1) the actor Juan is the topic of the sentence (actor-

topic), and this is indicated by the prefix ni-.
In (2) the libro is the topic (goal-topic), indicated by the
prefix gi-.
NON-ACTOR TOPIC CONSTRUCTIONS AS PASSIVES
 As seen from the previous Cebuano sentences, each
contains a topic, and that the topic is selected from
various nominal constituents of a sentence.
 Topic markers differ from one language to another, ang
in Cebuano, Tagalog and Hiligaynon, ti (Ilokano), an
(Bikol), say (Pangasinan) and ing in Kapampangan.
 In older tradition of Philippine Linguistics, the different
topic constructions were treated in terms of voice
variation. The actor-topic sentence was identified as the
active voice, and the goal-topic as the passive voice.
(Blommfield, 1917 and Blake, 1925)
 Modern linguists like Bell (1983) and other relational
grammarians consider the actor-topic form to be active
and basic. Non-actor topic on the other hand are treated
as passive.
 Givon (1979) characterizes non-actor topic constructions
as passives on the basis of his assumptions that they
perform the same function of ‘promoting’ non-agents to a
grammatically prominent role, just like the passive in
English and other languages.

 ‘Voice’ is understood to mean a system that mediates

between semantic functions such as subjects and object.
 The active voice is a system in which an agent is
expressed in grammatical subject, while the passive
voice puts a patient in the subject role.
 Thus, there is an obvious parallelism between the topic
construction in PL and the voice system in other
languages.
PROBLEMS
> The problem of the traditional analyses is that the
important differences between the Phil. topic
construction and the passive construction in English and
other languages are ignored in the interest of capturing
the similarities.
> A major difficulty with the works that analogize the
Philippine non-actor topic constructions to the passive is
the lack of rigorous and thorough understanding of what
the passive voice is.

PHILIPPINE SITUATION
> past understanding of the passive voice have been too
general, not being able to differentiate passivization and
topicalization.
 First, passives and topic constructions coexist, as in
Japanese, and thus a distinction needs to be made
between the two.
 Secondly, ergative languages, such as Mam, may have
passives.
 And thirdly, Chamorro, which has the Philippine-type
goal-topic construction, and Sama, a PL, have an
additional passive construction. (Shibatani,1985)

 Among the properties of the prototypical passive

construction that have been delineated by Shibatani, the
most relevant is the pragmatic function of agent
defocusing. That is, passivization involves the
defocusing of an agentive entity that figures in the
semantic frame.
 2 SYNTACTIC CONSEQUENCES:
1. the agent is neither not syntactically encoded at
all or is encoded in less syntactically prominent, e.g.
oblique position
2. a non-agentive nominal, typically a patient, is
promoted to a grammatically prominent, e.g. subject
position.
This occurs in a large number of languages, but by no
means in all instances of passives.

> In the passive, a patient is promoted to subject position,

while in the Phil. non-topic constructions, a non-agentive
(non-actor) nominal is placed in topic position, a position
that is grammatically prominent.
 SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES
- in the passive, there are restrictions on what can
be promoted. (In languages like German and Korean,
only direct objects can be made the subject of a passive
clause.)
- in Philippine situation, in which, not only goals
(patients), but also other nominal adjuncts including
recipient, benefactive, location, and position can be
placed in topic position.

>This wide applicability of promotion is a characteristic of

topicalization rather than passivization.
 CONSEQUENCE OF PASSIVIZATION
> passive does not normally encode an agent
syntactically, typically resulting in a syntactically
intransitive clause.
(there are a large number of languages that have
passives without patient promotion, so called the
impersonal passives, all passives involve defocusing of
agent in one way or another (Shibatani, 1985).

! Goal-topic construction in PL, actor is not normally

deleted in the PL non-actor construction, unlike in
passive.
Examples of goal-topic sentences in which the actors are marked as
genitive.

(5) Didto na-hibalag niya si Maria, ang anak

GF GEN TOP (goal) TOP
‘There she met Maria, the daughter
sa ilang mangluluto.
GEN
of their cook.’

…gi-kawat ko kining sundang gikan sa bungbong.

GF GEN TOP OBL
‘ I grabbed this bolo from the wall.’

Again, based from the statistics by Hopper and Thompson (1980), the
goal-topic construction shows no tendency towards agent omission.
 Based from the studies of Matthew Dryer, Shibatani in
Cebuano and Cooreman in Chamorro, clearly indicates
that the goal-topic construction is functionally different
from the passive construction, and this precisely is the
reason why languages having the goal-topic
construction, like Chamorro and Sama, may develop am
additional passive construction.
 To sum up this section, the goal-topic construction and
the passive construction are different in an important
way; an agent is an integral part of the GTC, while it is
generally not included in a passive clause.
 The GTC and PC also differ in terms of markedness.
Where markedness is correlated with at least 2 factors.
1. formal complexity
2. manifestation of markedness in text frequency
 PHLIPPINE GOAL-TOPIC CONSTRUCTION
1. non-actor topic constructions shows no more formal
complexity than do their actor-topic counterparts.
2. Philippine GTC is not a marked constrcution in text
frequency.

> In conclusion to this section, it is clear that while patient

and nominals in the GTC and the passive in English and
other languages are similar in regards to subject/topic
role, these two constructions shows far more significant
differences.
4. Goal-topic construction as ergative
> High frequency of patient-prominent constructions
is an earmark of ergative languages.
> In recent years, attempts have been made to
characterize PL as ergative on the basis of arguments,
on the high frequency of GTC. (Foley and Van Valin
1984)
>Discussions on ergativity involves many issues at
different grammatical levels, ranging from basic case
marking to the discourse organization involving different
types of clauses.
> Recent studies in ergativity, indicates that such an
overall characterization is often inadequate, for many
languages show phenomenon reflecting mixed
ergativity/accusative organization within individual
languages.
 MARKING OF NOMINAL ELEMENTS AND VERBAL
PREDICATE
(7) L-um-apit ang babae.
intrans-come:past ABS woman
‘The woman came.’

(8) B-in-ili ng babae ang baro.

trs-buy:past ERG woman ABS dress
‘The woman bought the dress.’

>The “subject” of the intransitive clause and the “direct

object” of the transitive clauses are marked in the same
way.
 Payne (1982) claims that “in traditional sense Tagalog
also can be said to manifest an ergative system”, for in
sentences 7 and 8, those elements that correspond to
the English intransitive subject and directed object are
marked by ang.

 The difficulty in the Philippine situation is that

topicalization is grammaticized to the extent that a
normal sentence, whether transitive or intransitive, must
contain one topic nominal, which has the effect of
masking the basic case marking system.
 In Pl, nominals reveal their basic case forms when they
are not marked by ang.
 (9) a. Gi-basa sa bata ang libro.
GF-read Actor-child Top(goal) book
‘The/a child read the book.’

b. Ni-basa ang bata ug libro.

AF-read Top (actor) child Goal book
‘The child read a book.’

> PL still retain clause-types in which ang-marking does not

take place and in which nominals expose their basic
case forms.