1. Shilluk is an Austronesian-type voice system
3. The structure of the voice system
4. Passive voice rather than ergativity
3.A Morphological evidence
Bert Remijsen, Otto Gwado Ayoker
Miller & Gilley (2001) hypothesize that constructions with OV voice, as in (4a), have an ergative alignment of constituents. The main arguments are these:
Intransitive clauses have SV order in Shilluk. If OV is assumed to be basic in transitive clauses, then the subject of an intransitive verb has the same position relative to the verb as the object of a transitive verb.
In this analysis, ɪ̀ɪ / ɪ̄ɪ, illustrated in (4), is interpreted as an ergative marker.
However, they assume that “there is no formal marker of passive voice indicated on verbal morphology” [Miller & Gilley 2001:52]. This is incorrect, as noted in Section 3.A.
In fact, OV voice exhibits all of the morphosyntactic characteristics of a passive: (a) agent is demoted; (b) patient appears in the same slot as the agent in the AVO voice; (c) the verb form is morphologically marked.
Conclusion: The pragmatically unmarked constituent order of transitive main clauses is a passive construction, as noted in older studies: “[Shilluk people] generally prefer to speak in the passive voice” [Westermann 1912:78].
The AVO voice displays the root form of the verb (at least in the past tense). In the case of {cam} ‘eat’, this form has a Low tone and a short vowel (1a); in the case of {maat} ‘drink’, it has a Low Fall and long vowel (1b).
In OV voice, the verb’s lexical tone is replaced by a High Fall / ̂́/ as a morphological specification – see (2a,b).
The XVO inflection is marked by morphological lengthening of the vowel, (VVV), and by tonal marking, which is predictable on the basis of the lexical tone of the root: it is Mid if the lexical specification is Low – see (3a) vs. (1a), and High Fall to Mid if the lexical specification is Low Fall – see (3b) vs. (1b).
Conclusion: The AVO (active) verb form is basic in a morphological sense. The verb forms in the other voices (OV, XVO) are predictable given the AVO form.
1. In a nutshell
Shilluk is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in South Sudan. We present a descriptive analysis of its voice system, distinguishing three voices (Sections 2,3). A similar system can be found in Dinka (Andersen 1991; Erlewine et al., to appear). Aside from describing the voice system, we focus on two issues:
A. Ergativity or a voice system?
While older studies (Westermann 1912, Tucker 1955) postulate a passive voice in Shilluk, Miller & Gilley (2001) hypothesize ergativity instead. We argue that, if this is approached as a morphosyntactic question, the passive- voice analysis is to be preferred (Section 4). Overall, the system can be analysed as an Austronesian-type voice system (Section 5).
B. The morphological paradigm is very rich – how is it structured?
We lay out the structure of the wider verb morphology, distinguishing between the base paradigm, and a set of derivations (Section 6).
Background
Shilluk morphology is head-marking: grammatical relations between a verb and its argument(s) are marked on the verb (head), not on argument nouns.
Shilluk is rich in morphology, but much of this is stem-internal, expressed through vowel length and tone. There are three levels of vowel length and eight contrastive tone categories.
3.B Obligatoriness and case-marking of arguments
The postverbal argument:
In AVO voice, this argument, which tends to express the patient, is obligatory.
In the OV voice (and also in XVO voice), the agent can optionally be expressed as a peripheral argument, i.e., a prepositional phrased introduced by ɪ̀ɪ (singular) / ɪ̄ɪ (plural). This is illustrated in the elicited examples in (4).
The preverbal argument:
In the active (AVO) and passive (OV) voices alike, a 3rd singular preverbal argument can be omitted if it is obvious from the discourse context.
Conclusion: The agent is expressed as a core argument in active voice, and as a peripheral argument in the other two voices. This is characteristic of a voice system (Erlewine et al., to appear).
5. Shilluk is an Austronesian type voice system
Shilluk displays all characteristics of an Austronesian-type voice system (Erlewine et al., to appear): a) there is a pivot position: preverbal; b) there is voice morphology on the verb; c) non-pivot subjects are marked: ɪ̀ɪ / ɪ̄ɪ; d) extraction is limited to the pivot: see evidence from relativization in (6).
(4) a.
kwʌ̄n á-cấm ɪ̀ɪ kùl
porridge pst-eat:ov prp Kul
‘Kul ate porridge.’ b.
pâal á-cāaam kwʌ̄n ɪ̀ɪ kùl
spoon pst-eat:xvo porridge prp Kul
‘Kul used a spoon to eat porridge.’
(6)
t̪ʌ̂ʌʌw lʌ̂w kɪ̀ bɔ̂ɔl-ɪ̀ kɛ̂ɲ à pwōoot ɟɪ̀ɪ kɪ́ lʊ̀ʊt̪
date:p better prp front-prt.s place:cs rel hit:xvo people prp stick
‘Desert dates are better than a place where people get beaten with a stick.’
6. Beyond the base paradigm
2. Voices: active (AVO), passive (OV), applicative (XVO)
Beyond the base paradigm, Shilluk transitive verbs display 6 derivations. These are illustrated in Table 1.
Note that OV and XVO voices are morphologically distinguished in the Base paradigm only; they involve the same verb form in the derivations. This is in line with the evidence that AVO is morphologically basic.
In contrast with Remijsen et al. (2016), we treat the 3 voices as part of the inflectional paradigm, and the other operations in Table 1 as derivations. This analysis makes the right predictions as to which forms are to be found in defective verbs, i.e., verbs lacking one or more derivational paradigm
The inflectional paradigm of a Shilluk transitive verb marks three different patterns of alignment of core arguments (hereafter voices): AVO, OV, and XVO. Each of these voices is illustrated below by two elicited examples:
The preverbal slot holds agent in AVO, and patient in OV. In XVO, this slot holds an instrument, as in (3), or a location / time as in (6). The latter semantic roles would be expressed as peripheral arguments with AVO or VO voices.
Constituents representing agents, patients, and other semantic roles are relativized using AVO, OV, and XVO voices, respectively.
AVO OV
XVO
Base
á-càm
á-cấm
á-cāaam
Centrifugal
á-câaam
á-cáaam̀
Centripetal
á-cʌ̂ʌʌm
á-cʌ́ʌʌm̀
Benefactive
á-cʌ̂m-ɪ̀
á-cʌ́m-ɪ̀
Iterative
á-câam-ɪ̀
á-cáam-ɪ̀
Ambitransitive
á-cʌ̀m-ɪ̀
---
á-cʌ̄m-ɪ̄
Antipassive
á-cʌ̀ʌʌm
á-cʌ̄ʌʌm
Table 1 – The 3 voices of {cam} ‘eat’, in base paradigm and 6 derivations. Only past tense forms are given, and subject-indexed forms are not included.
Sound examples embedded, click on loudspeaker symbol to play
(1) a.
kùl á-càm kwʌ̄n
Kul pst-eat porridge
‘Kul ate porridge.’ b.
kùl á-mâat̪ càak
Kul pst-drink milk
‘Kul drank milk.’
AVO
(2)
kwʌ̄n á-cấm
porridge pst-eat:ov
‘The porridge was eaten.’
càak á-mấat̪
milk pst-drink:ov
‘The milk was drunk.’ OV
(3)
pâal á-cāaam kwʌ̄n
spoon pst-eat:xvo porridge
‘The porridge was eaten with a spoon.’
lwɔ̂ɔl á-mấaat̪̄ càak
cup pst-drink:xvo milk
‘The milk was drunk milk with a cup.’
XVO
3.C Pragmatics
Remarkably, it is the OV voice that is discourse-neutral. For example, in response to to the question ‘What happened?’, (4a) is felicitous, and not (1a).
AVO voice is pragmatically marked. For example, (1a) – which is comparable to (4a) but with AVO voice rather than VO – is felicitous in response to the question ‘What did Kul decide to eat?’, where Kul as an agent is the topic. An example from a narrative is presented in (5).
(5)
kɛ̂ɲ à á-kɛ̂́t̪ líɲ-gɛ́ tèeŋ-ɔ̀
time:cs rel pst-go conflict-3p become.hard
ɲɪ́kāaaŋɔ̄ á-kwàɲ kwóp-ɪ́ d̪wốoot̪-ɔ̀
Nyikango pst-choose say:nom-prt.p depart-nom
‘When their feud worsened, Nyikango chose to announce his departure.’
Glosses cs Construct State, nom Nominalisation, p Plural, prt Pertensive, prp Preposition , pst Past, rel Relativizer Acknowledgements SIL International, for facilitating research in South Sudan. The Leverhulme Trust, for research funding (project “A descriptive analysis of the Shilluk language”, RPG ). References Andersen (1991). Subject and topic in Dinka. Studies in Language 15(2), Erlewine, Levin & van Urk (to appear). Ergativity and Austronesian-type voice systems. In Coon, Massam, & Travis (eds.). The Oxford handbook of ergativity. OUP. Miller & Gilley (2001). Evidence for ergativity in Shilluk. JALL 22: Remijsen, Miller-Naudé &Gilley (2016). The morphology of Shilluk transitive verbs. JALL 37, Tucker (1955). The verb in Shilluk. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung 3: Westermann (1912). The Shilluk people – their language and folklore. UPC of North America.