The Development of Agent-demoting passives in Malayic

Abstract

The di-passive in Malay/Indonesian and other Malayic languages is clearly a European-type agent demotion passive; the agent, nevertheless, unexpectedly exhibits grammatical properties which are cross-linguistically typical of arguments and unusual for adjuncts. We explain the unusual properties of di-passive agents by arguing for the analysis of the di-passive construction as deriving historically from a Philippine-type voice construction in which the non-subject agent remains an argument. Based on evidence from modern and classical varieties of Malayic, we propose a pathway of historical changes whereby a Philippine-type non-active construction developed into a European-type agent demoting passive.