[Lingtyp] query: instrument voice

[David Gil]

Dear all,

In the Austronesian languages of Taiwan, Philippines and Madagascar, 
there is a verbal affix that is said to mark "instrument voice"; loosely 
speaking, it marks the topic or subject of the clause as bearing the 
semantic role of instrument.

Is anybody familiar with similar instrument-voice constructions from 
other parts of the world?

The reason I ask is that a similar construction is present also in some 
languages of the Bird's Head and Cenderawasih Bay regions of New Guinea, 
eg. Biak, Roon, Wamesa and Wooi (Austronesian), and Hatam, Sougb, Meyah 
and Moskona (non-Austronesian).What's curious about this construction is 
that, unlike the well-known Austronesian cases, it is the only 
morphologically-marked voice in each of the languages in question; there 
is no "ordinary" morphological passive construction.My feeling is that 
this construction is quite uncommon cross-linguistically, but I would 
like to get a feel for the extent to which this is indeed true.

Thanks,

David

-- 
David Gil

Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany

Email:gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20220222/093a67f6/attachment.htm>