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In:The Documentarist Turn: From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations
Edited by Sonja Riesberg, Uta Reinöhl and Birgit Hellwig
[Studies in Language Companion Series 240] 2026
► pp. 572–609

Chapter 21
What’s a passive in Besemah?

ORCiD logo with link | University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
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Abstract
In languages of western Indonesia with symmetrical voice systems, apparent passive constructions often display overlapping features with transitive P-oriented voice (PV) constructions. Drawing on a corpus of everyday conversations in Besemah, this chapter demonstrates that it is untenable to distinguish transitive PV constructions from such passive constructions, calling into question core features of both: A arguments are not obligatory in unmarked PV constructions; ‘by’-phrases serve multiple functions, and it is unclear whether A demotion is in fact one of these functions; PV constructions without A arguments exhibit the same patterns of unrealized A reference found elsewhere in the language. This chapter has broader implications for the analysis of both passives and symmetrical voice alternations in the languages of western Indonesia.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Besemah
    • 2.1Corpus
    • 2.2Voice and grammatical relations
    • 2.3Allusive reference and the challenge of unrealized arguments
  • 3.Passives in Besemah?
    • 3.1Overall patterns of PV constructions
    • 3.2PV constructions with A
    • 3.3PV without A
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (46)
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