Crossed control revisited: The structure and interpretations of ‘want’ and so on + passive verb in Malay/Indonesian
Hiroki Nomoto
April 2021 

In Malay/Indonesian, when certain predicates such as ‘want’ are followed by a passive verb, an ambiguity arises about who has the desire and other attitudes in question. The attitude holder can be either the surface subject or the passive agent. This paper critically assesses the data and claims presented in three recent studies (Berger 2019; Kroeger and Frazier 2020; Jeoung 2020) through consideration of additional data. It shows that the ambiguity is empirically robust, contrary to the doubts expressed by Jeoung, and that the restructuring analysis advocated by the latter two studies has problems with its primary evidence: alternate voice marking realization. Instead, the paper confirms the previous understanding of the construction, including a biclausal structure with a dyadic matrix predicate and the importance of voice marking. Methodologically, it demonstrates that linguistic evidence should come from multiple sources, that is, not from elicitation or texts alone but from both of these (and perhaps more).

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005913 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Wacana
keywords:	malay, indonesian, crossed control, voice, verb-auxiliary distinction, restructuring, syntax
previous versions:	v1 [April 2021]
Downloaded:	740 times

 

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