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<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>I must confess to being a little puzzled at how the responses to
my original query seem to have focused largely on applicatives.
To cite just one example ...<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 22/02/2022 08:31, Martin Haspelmath
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:6af16cf7-7484-9945-f83c-fd944ba50551@eva.mpg.de">
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Once we have clear definitions, we can begin to answer David's
question whether languages with instrumental applicatives only are
rare outside of Austronesian. <br>
</blockquote>
<p>A fair question, but not the one that was asking; I was asking
whether languages with *instrument voice* only are rare outside of
Austronesian. Actually, what I really meant to ask is whether
constructions like those in Roon and other proximate languages are
attested elsewhere in the world; that is to say, constructions in
which a verb hosts an affix denoting an instrument whose function
in the clause looks more like a subject or topic than like a
direct object or oblique. I used the term "instrument voice"
because this seemed to me to be the most appropriate term, or, to
put it differently, the constructions i am looking at seemed to me
to be more similar to, say, a garden-variety instrument-voice
construction in Tagalog, than anything else I could think of,
including most prototypical applicative constructions. In
response to my query, Mark came through with the Tzutujil example,
and one or two others have provided potential leads that I will be
following up on soon.<br>
</p>
<p>But my choice of terms led to a terminological debate, with
several of you expressing your opinions that the constructions in
question, in Roon and other New Guinea languages, are instances of
applicatives. To which I would respond with a question: would you
also characterize a Philippine-type instrumental voice
construction as an applicative?</p>
<p>I wouldn't, which is why I phrased the question in the way that I
did. Note that I would still acknowledge the merits of a
sometimes-proposed analysis of Philippine voice in which, say, the
instrumental voice is analyzed compositionally as consisting of
(a) an applicative "promoting" oblique to direct object; in
combination with (b) a passive "promoting" a direct object to
subject. But under such an analysis, while an applicative
construction *forms part of* the instrument voice construction,
the instrument voice construction as a whole is more than just an
applicative. (As Mark points out, a similar analysis is clearly
called for in the case of Indonesian, in which passive <i>di-</i>
and applicative <i>-kan</i> frequently co-occur.) However, in
the New Guinea case, there is no evidence that I am aware of for
such a compositional analysis; the prefixes that express what I
was calling instrumental voice provide no evidence for any kind of
complex internal structure. Indeed, for this reason,
constructions such as those with the Roon <i>u-</i> prefix seem
to me to offer "better" examples of "instrument voice" than even
the Philippine constructions for which the term was originally
coined.</p>
<p>David<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
</pre>
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