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

Amis Voice Markers 27
vP
Causer/Agent v’
pag EP
E’
pa vP
Causee/Agent v’
pag AspP
Asp VP
Figure 6: Morpheme deletion (revised, Travis, 2005, p. 178)
She also argues that in Malagasy, when the telicity marker a is present in an
unaccusative sentence, an external argument can be introduced. Examples are shown
below.
(1) tafa.vor.in’ny mpampianatra ny ankizy
TAFA.meet.Gen’the 2 teacher the children
‘The teachers were able to gather the children.’ (Travis, 2005, p. 182)
(2) *n.i.vor.in’ny mpampianatra ny ankizy
PST.i.Meet’the teacher the children
‘The teachers were able to gather the children.’ (Travis, 2005, p. 183)
To be specific, she argues that “telicity will take an Agent and turn it into a Cause
(non-volitional agent) when attached to roots that have Agents in their theta-grids. When
attached to a root with no external argument (such as an unaccusative or an adjective), it
will add a Cause argument” (Travis, 2005, p. 183). Either a non-volitional agent or cause
argument, according to Travis (2005), is in the spec of InnAspP. The key of arguing the
non-volitional agent or cause being Spec of InnAspP is the occurrence of the [+telic]
feature. However, whether Amis, under the same language family with Malagasy, might
display similar theta-role changing process as Malagay does is beyond the scope of the
current study and this study leaves this question for further research.
The present study adopts the generalized Doubly-Filled Comp Filter (Sportiche,
1992; Koopman, 1996) and extends Travis’s research to further interpret Amis voice
markers. Prior to proposing suggestions for Amis voice markers, I will introduce the major
characteristics of Amis voice markers.
2 Abbreviations: Gen: Genitive; Nom: Nominative; Dat: Dative; PST: Past tense; Asp: Aspect; AV: Actor
voice; UV: Undergoer voice; Neut: Neutral voice; 1sg: First person singular; CN: Common noun marker;
PPN: Personal noun marker; Prep: Preposition.