Voice, Valence and Focus in Makassarese

Abstract

Makassarese is a language of South Sulawesi spoken by up to 2 million people. Although it has a set of verb prefixes cognate with voice-marking morphology in other Austronesian languages of Indonesia and the Philippines, unlike many of these languages Makassarese has an asymmetrical voice system with an unambiguous passive prefix niopposed to several constructions loosely termed ‘active’. This paper examines this voice contrast, and also discusses why the verb prefixes which could appear to be marking voice are in fact doing something else. Finally, it will discuss the use of a pre-predicate focus slot, which serves several of the functions typically fulfilled by a voice system in Indonesian languages.