The development of the English-type passive in Balinese

• Main Author: Hiroki Nomoto
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Indonesia 2018-04-01
• Series: Wacana: Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia
• Subjects: balinese; classical malay; voice; passives; clitic doubling
• Online Access: http://wacana.ui.ac.id/index.php/wjhi/article/view/620

<p>The morpheme <em>-a</em> in Balinese is ambiguous between the third person enclitic pronoun and a passive voice marker. Different views exist as to whether the morpheme can be the pronoun in the presence of a <em>teken</em> agentive phrase. This paper argues that it can and that the construction in which the pronoun <em>-a</em> and a <em>teken</em> phrase co-occur (the hybrid type) is an instance of clitic doubling. A hypothesis is proposed about how the third person pronoun changed into a passive marker and how different passive subtypes came into existence. It is claimed that the hybrid type played a key role in the change. The hybrid type supports the analysis of passives in general as a clitic doubling construction (Baker, Johnson and Roberts 1989). A clitic doubling analysis of passives enables a new typology of passives whereby passives are classified according to how the clitic and its double in a passive clause are expressed.</p>