2023
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Katharina Haude, « An Austronesian-type voice system in an Amazonian isolate? Comparing Movima and Tagalog », HAL-SHS : linguistique, ID : 10670/1.8szu3v
The paper discusses some typologically rare structural similarities between Movima, a South American isolate, and the Austronesian language Tagalog. Both languages have a symmetrical voice system, and in both languages verbs and nouns are syntactically nearly equivalent. For Tagalog, it has been argued that the system is due to a basically equational sentence pattern with a nominal predicate (the "nominalist hypothesis"), and this explanation is also plausible for Movima. However, in contrast to some accounts of Austronesian languages, there is no evidence of a nominalizing origin of the Movima voice markers, which would help to explain the use of verbs in nominal domains. The article shows that the description of small, understudied, and even isolate languages is necessary to realize that some grammatical patterns may not be as uncommon as one may think, and can help to refine the ideas conceived about the better-known linguistic systems.