proto-southwestern-tai revised: a new reconstruction - seals 22

Amis Voice Markers 25
1.2.3 Pearson (2005)
Pearson (2005) argues that the NP (Trigger in his terminology), which is co-indexed from
the voice marker on the verb, is located in an A’ position, parallel to TOPIC. This trigger is
base-generated with a null operator in the spec of WhP raised from a ‘case position’. The
distribution of case positions is shown below. Since the trigger is not in an A’ position,
voice markers are not taken as the Spell-Out of agreement on the functional projection
(such as T or INFL). Instead, Pearson (2005) suggests that these voice markers are
indicators of the case position from which the null operator raises and their forms are
dichotomized based on the weak or strong feature on the E(vent)P.
TopP
Top’ TRIGGER
WhP
Wh’ opi
TP
EP
NOM E’
vP
v ’
AspP
ACC Asp’
Figure 3: Pearson approach (2007, p. 385, 402)
VP
V’
V Root
1.2.4 Amis voice markers by Liu (2003)
As for Amis voice markers, Liu (2003), following Chang (1997), suggests that voice
markers in Amis are in the head of VoiceP although they differ in their ability to assign
case and theta-role. For instance, she argues “the AV marker mi- being functional does not
assign any thematic role to spec-VoiceP nor does it assign case to the Actor” (Liu, 2003, p.
118); thus, in order to be case marked, the agent must move up to the spec of TP to check
off the thematic feature in VoiceP. On the other hand, the undergoer voice marker, ma-,
also located in VoiceP, can assign the genitive case to the agent in spec-VP and the theta
role to patient in the spec of VoiceP.