A Discourse Explanation of the Transitivity Phenomena in Kavalan, Squliq, and Tsou

A Discourse Explanation of the Transitivity Phenomena in Kavalan,Squliq, and Tsou

Shuanfan Huang, Michael Tanangkingsing

Oceanic Linguistics, Volume 50, Number 1, June 2011, pp. 93-119 (Article)

Published by University of Hawai'i PressDOI: 10.1353/ol.2011.0005

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Oceanic Linguistics, Volume 50, no. 1 (June 2011)© by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved.

A Discourse Explanation of the Transitivity Phenomena in Kavalan,

Squliq, and TsouShuanfan Huang* and Michael Tanangkingsing†

*YUANZE UNIVERSITY, *NATIONAL TAIWAN UNIVERSITY, AND†NATIONAL TAIPEI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

In this study, we investigate the discourse-functional properties of theextended intransitive clause (EIC) in relation to other clause types in threeFormosan languages: Tsou, Kavalan, and Squliq. We offer evidence, basedon tracking behavior of NPs, to show that case-marking in EICs is motivatedby a core/oblique distinction, and that the core/oblique distinction arises in asystematic way from recurrent patterns in discourse. The referents of theoblique-marked argument nominals in EICs in these languages are shown tobe consistently much less likely to be tracked or to be continuous than eitherthe nominative or the ergative argument of a nonactor voice clause. The dataderived from investigating the tracking behavior of noun phrases suggest thatthe validity of a grammatical transitive/intransitive distinction in these lan-guages is quite robust, and that the distinction can best be correctly discernedby examining the functioning of various argument nominals in discourse.

1. INTRODUCTION.1 All of the Formosan languages, with the singular exceptionof Rukai, have a voice system that allows different core arguments to be placed in “sub-ject” position, thereby marking them as identifiable, and that signals the presence of a par-ticular semantic role associated with the subject. Two voice constructions are usuallydistinguished: actor voice and undergoer voice. The actor voice is basically intransitive,and the undergoer voice transitive.

However, the nature of the actor voice constructions has been a source of considerabledebate (Chang 1997, 2004; Reid and Liao 2004; Ross and Teng 2005). Two questions thathave often been raised are: What is the nature of the difference between the actor voiceconstruction and the undergoer voice construction? Are there gradations of transitivity

1. An early version of this paper was presented at the Oxford-Kobe Seminar: The Linguistics ofEndangered Languages, held in Kobe, Japan, April 2–5, 2006, and the Tenth InternationalSymposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics, held at Academia Sinica, May 25–28,2006. We are grateful to Paul Li, Lawrence Reid, Malcolm Ross, Matt Shibatani, and espe-cially two anonymous reviewers for highly valuable feedback. The first author acknowledgesthe funding support for research reported in this study by Taiwan’s National Science Council.Special thanks go to members of our Formosan language research team for help with some-times labor-intensive data analysis: Fuhui Hsieh, Hueiju Huang, Maya Yeh, Dongyi Lin, andHaowen Jiang.

94 OCEANIC LINGUISTICS, VOL. 50, NO. 1

such that the actor voice construction in some languages may be transitive, though notnecessarily as transitive as the undergoer voice construction in those languages?

Exploring these issues is beyond the scope of this paper, but is the focus of researchin progress. In this study we investigate transitivity alternations and the connectionbetween transitivity and case-marking in three Formosan languages, Kavalan, Squliq,and Tsou, especially the nature of the core/oblique distinction, based primarily on dis-course-pragmatic evidence. We hope that the findings derived from the present studywill help provide at least suggestive answers to these questions. Two subtypes of theintransitive construction are distinguished: the ordinary intransitive construction thattakes no patient argument whatsoever, and the extended intransitive construction (EIC)that takes a patient-like argument. We will demonstrate below that these languages havegrammaticized the core/oblique distinction in EICs, and that the patient arguments inEICs have little saliency, since they are rarely tracked in subsequent discourse.

Case, valency, and transitivity are central concepts in Formosan and Philippine lin-guistics, but they are also sources of considerable controversy. The controversy centersaround the interpretation of the nature of the extended intransitive clauses (EICs). Mostsemantically transitive verbs in Formosan languages may occur in a grammatically tran-sitive nonactor voice (NAV) construction, the canonical transitive clause, or they mayoccur in a grammatically intransitive EIC clause marked by the presence of an E, anoblique-marked NP (the term EIC is due to Dixon 1994). E refers to the second argumentof a dyadic intransitive verb that is marked differently from S, A, and O. The exact mark-ing is irrelevant; it may be oblique (as in the languages under examination here); dative,as in Dyirbal; partitive, as in Hungarian; or locative, as in Tongan (Dixon 1994:123).Subscripts can then be used to distinguish different types of E. For instance, EO is an Ethat is like an O, EL is an E that is like a locative, and so forth.

It is commonly accepted that if a language has two distinct two-argument structures,one will be higher in transitivity than the other one. In high transitive clauses, objects tendto be more identifiable and the clauses tend to be perfective; in lower transitive clauses,the objects tend to be less identifiable, and the clauses tend to be imperfective. What isspecial about the two two-argument structures (EIC and NAV) in the languages examinedhere is that neither definiteness nor perfectivity can be shown to distinguish one clausetype from the other, especially in Squliq and Kavalan. Rather, it is their difference withregard to participant tracking that is the hallmark of the distinction between the two clausetypes. If the same verbs and argument NPs can appear in two different constructions, EICand NAV, then these constructions can be shown to differ in their discourse-pragmaticbehavior, with the referents of the Es in EICs showing little continuity, while the referentsof Os in NAVs are more salient and exhibit a much stronger propensity to be tracked.

To the best of our knowledge, the status of EICs as a distinct clause type in Formosanlinguistics was first recognized in Starosta (1996), where it was termed a pseudotransitiveclause, though the full thrust of his proposal was not immediately appreciated. Thus theoblique case-marker tu in Kavalan has been analyzed variously an as accusative case-marker—either on semantic grounds (Li 1978, 1997), or based on control properties(Chang 1997, 2000)—or as an oblique case-marker, based on morphosyntactic andsemantic grounds (Liao 2002; Reid and Liao 2004; cf. Ross and Teng 2005). Of these,

TRANSITIVITY PHENOMENA IN KAVALAN, SQULIQ, AND TSOU 95

Liao’s (2002) argument that tu is oblique is instructive. Liao (2002:149–52) observes thattu-marked arguments are usually indefinite, and thus the clauses with a tu-marked nomi-nal are low in transitivity, based on Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) semantic-pragmaticparameters for transitivity, and so tu is best analyzed as an oblique marker. As table 17below shows, however, the referents of Es in Kavalan natural discourse tend to be largelydefinite rather than indefinite.

Similarly, squ’ in Squliq Atayal has also been called an accusative case-marker (Li1978, 1997; L. Huang et al. 1998) or an oblique case-marker (Rau 1992; L. Huang 1993;Starosta 1998; cf. L. Huang 2006). The same controversy also embroils the status of EICsin Philippine languages (Shibatani 1988; Himmelmann 1991; Kroeger 1993), such thatDixon (1994:xvi) has even declined to make a call on the ergativity of Philippine lan-guages: “In a couple of instances there is such severe disagreement that I have preferredto keep to a minimum the references to that language or group of languages. Theseinclude Tagalog and the other Philippine languages ... .”2

Although the EIC is from a formal point of view a relatively uniform phenomenonacross Formosan languages, its function can be shown to vary quite considerably fromlanguage to language (see section 5 for details). Examples of EICs from natural corpusdata are given below.3

(1) TSOUmoso maezo aut’ʉcʉ to mo con-ci fo’kunge.AUX.AV AV.also raise OBL AUX.AV one-REL frog‘(They) also kept a frog.’ (Frog 1:3)

(2) KAVALANa. matiw m-kyala matiw ta= ni-paduma-an-na tu= byabas

AV.go AV-pick.up AV.go LOC PFV-plant-NMLZ-3sG.GEN OBL guava‘(He) went to pick ... went to where he planted guavas.’ (Pear 2:3)

2. Traditional descriptions of Cebuano (Wolff 1965, 1971; Bunye and Yap 1971; Trosdal 1992) haverarely touched on transitivity. No other studies on Cebuano that we are aware of discuss AF clausesin terms of transitivity. The mag- form in Tagalog was said to form transitive, in contrast withintransitive, AF verbs, to connote actions involving an object external to an actor (Schachter andOtanes 1972: 289). In descriptions of other Philippine languages, these EICs were termed vari-ously “pseudo-transitive constructions” (Reid and Liao 2001:16), “double-complement intransitiveconstructions” (Reid and Liao 2004:441), and “antipassives” (Brainard and Behrens 2002 forYakan; Pebley 1999 for Kagayanen; and Daguman, pers. comm., for Northern Subanen, to namejust a few). In these languages, the verb in an antipassive is “a semantically transitive verb wherethe O is demoted to oblique NP or deleted” (Brainard and Behrens 2002:116). Moreover, in Taga-log and northern Philippine languages such as Arta and Mamanwa, these Os usually have anindefinite or a partitive reading (Reid and Liao 2004:441). Dixon’s (1994) definition of E has beenapplied to Philippine languages by Reid and Liao (2004), Liao (2002, 2004), and Wang (2004).Reid and Liao (2001, 2004) in particular treat the dyadic intransitive clauses (S-E) as a separatetype of construction distinct from the transitive clauses.

3. Following standard practice with Formosan languages, sentences do not begin with cap-ital letters, since the distinction between upper and lower case is sometimes used to markphonemic differences. Abbreviations used in this study follow the Leipzig GlossingRules. Additional abbreviations are: ASP, aspect marker; AV, actor voice marker; CONJ,conjunction; CV, circumstantial voice marker; DM, discourse marker; E, extended argu-ment; EXIST, existential verb; FNP, final particle; HAB, habitual marker; LIG, ligature;LNK, linker; LOCNMLZ, locative nominalizer; LV, locative voice marker; NAV, nonactorvoice marker; PM, pause marker; PN, proper noun; PV, patient voice marker; REDUP, redu-plication.

b. yau-ti ya kaput-na mangu timaizipna kiara tu,EXIST-PFV NOM friend-3SG.GEN help 3SG.OBL <AV>pick.up OBL

ni-qa-tabuq-an na byabas a yau ta-lazan-an.PFV-QA-spill-LOCNMLZ GEN guava LNK that LOC-road-LOC

‘His friend helped him pick up the guavas spilled over the road.’(Pear 2: 19–20)

(3) SQULIQana’ yaya’ tryung qasa uzi’, memaw m-laka’ mung squ’,no.matter mother wasp that also even AV-fly hear.AV OBL

hngyang na’ huzil ru iy botu’ qasa, h<m>kangi’sound GEN dog CONJ PM male.name that <AV>look.forsqu’ a qpatung qa, si kt-ay maha rangi’-nya’ qasa.OBL PM frog that just see-LV Q friend-3SG.GEN that‘Even the queen wasps flew out to hear the sound of the dog, and Botulooked for the frog, their friend.’ (Frog 1:98–103)

In (l), to is an oblique case-marker in Tsou; in (2), tu is the oblique case-marker inKavalan; and in (3), squ’ is an oblique case-marker in Squliq Atayal. One of the goals ofthis paper is to provide evidence, based on tracking behavior of oblique-marked nomi-nals, that each is an oblique case-marker in the language under investigation, and not anaccusative case-marker. If that is the case, then constructions like (l)–(3) must be intransi-tive. Of course, given a morphosyntactically ergative language, it would then be naturalto assume that the language does not and may not have an accusative case-marker, sincethat would contravene its ergative alignment pattern. As will be demonstrated in section 4below, there are languages such as Squliq where tracking behavior does not always pro-vide as clearcut an answer as one would expect.

In what ways can existing theories of case-marking help researchers resolve the ques-tion whether a given case-marker marks a core argument or an oblique argument? VanValin and LaPolla (1997:368) propose the following case assignment rules for the erga-tive pattern within a Relational Reference Grammar (RRG) framework:

(4) a. Assign absolutive case to the lowest-ranking macrorole argument.b. Assign ergative case to the other macrorole argument.c. Assign dative case to nonmacrorole arguments (default).

These rules assume an ergative alignment pattern and the distinction between macroroleand nonmacrorole arguments as givens, and case-marking rules are then assigned. But toa field linguist, there can never be such givens, and thus the case assignment rules byRRG are of little practical help in determining the relation between case-marking, transi-tivity, and alignment in a given language.

The system of grammatical transitivity in Formosan languages would be quite easy tomiss if we follow the guidelines of conventional syntactic typology and look at clausesjust in terms of S, A, and P. Comrie (1984:92), for example, suggests the following guide-lines for researchers: “In the transitive construction, we start from a set of canonical tran-sitive constructions, referring to actions where an agent acts upon a patient, and use A forthe agent in such a construction and P for the patient.” But what exactly constitutes acanonical transitive construction often cannot be determined simply on the basis of the


surface marking of a sentence. On the one hand, numerous languages deploy two sets oftwo-argument constructions that differ from each other in interesting yet complex ways(see Kittila 2002 and many of the papers collected in Kulikov, Malchukov, and de Swart2006 for further discussion). On the other hand, the question of what constitute unmarkedproperties for objects itself has been a point of contention (see Lazard 1998, Aissen 2003,and Malchukov 2008 for discussion of the relevant issues). These issues, importantthough they are, will not be taken up here, as the present study has the more limited goalof focusing on the nature of EIC in Formosan languages.

Transitivity in Formosan languages, as we have seen, pivots on the status of the EICvis-à-vis the canonical transitive clause, namely, the NAV. Both EIC and NAV clausestake two arguments, the only difference being that in an EIC, one of the argument nomi-nals has the semantic role of patient, but is marked as an oblique, while both arguments ofan NAV are marked as core arguments.4 Reid and Liao (2001, 2004) recognize the dyadicintransitive clause as a separate type of construction from the transitive clause. In lan-guages across the world, among clauses containing two arguments, low-transitivity onesare grammatically treated differently from high-transitivity ones. Once we can reliablyidentify intransitive, extended intransitive, and canonical transitive clauses in a language,identifying its case-marking type then becomes a trivial job.

Now transitivity marking of clauses may be primarily motivated by the semantic rolesof the participants, as in active/stative or agent/patient languages (Mithun 1991), or by thecore/oblique distinction. Case-marking in the EIC, the clause type we are centrally con-cerned with in this study, cannot be motivated by the semantic roles of participants, since,as we have seen, semantically transitive verbs in these languages can appear either in anintransitive EIC or in a transitive NAV. We argue below that case-marking in EICs ismotivated by the core/oblique distinction, which in turn is motivated by the differentialtracking behavior of oblique-marked argument nominals vis-à-vis nominative-markednominals. The correct interpretation of the EIC, then, depends on whether one can pro-vide a principled explanation for the distinction between core and oblique NP arguments.In this study we take a functional-typological approach to the case-marking on objects inFormosan languages.

The logic of our argument is this: we first show that, in these languages, surface case-marking cannot be taken as a straightforward indicator of a core/oblique distinction ingrammatical relations; we then offer evidence from discourse data to show that the refer-ents of the oblique-marked NPs in EICs in these languages are consistently much lesslikely than either the nominative or the ergative argument of an NAV clause to be trackedor to be continuous. Nominative and ergative arguments of an NAV are core arguments

4. To illustrate, (i) below shows an EIC with the patient nominal marked as an Oblique, whilethe patient nominal in (ii) is marked as a Nominative, and the agent is marked as a genitive.(i) TSOU

mo cihi ci oko eh: mo tʉtpʉtʉ to fo’kunge.AUX.AV one REL child FP AUX.AV AV.catch OBL frog‘A child caught a frog.’ (Pear 2:1)

(ii) TSOUi-si cu taʉza ’e ceoyu.AUX.NAV-3SG.GEN PFV AV.shake NOM bee‘The dog shook the bee(hive).’ (Pear 2:26)


that are more central to discourse, that participants talk about the most, and that they wanttheir coparticipants to keep track of. By examining the tracking behavior of NPs, we areable to show that core arguments of an NAV clause are much more likely to be tracked indiscourse than the oblique-marked Es in EICs. NPs that are minimally continuous arecognitively less salient and are less likely to be recognized by the grammar of a languageas core arguments, which in turn makes them more likely to be coded by a morphologi-cally more marked case to indicate their peripheral status. On the other hand, NPs thatplay a central role in tracking participants are cognitively salient and are more likely to becoded as core arguments.

The tracking data thus provide strong evidence that these languages, in particularTsou and Kavalan, have grammaticized the core/oblique distinction as suggested by thetracking behavior of EICs in discourse. We compared the tracking behavior of theoblique-marked NPs in EICs and the patient nominals of NAVs, and found that theoblique-marked nominals in EICs in these three languages serve minimally in trackingparticipants. We take this and other findings as providing strong evidence that these threelanguages have grammaticized the core/oblique distinction in EICs in relation to NAVs.

In order to study the connection between transitivity and case-marking, we limit ourdiscussion to three clause types: AV intransitive, canonical NAV transitive, and EIC. Theorganization of this study is as follows. The database used and the methodology adoptedin this study are given in section 2. An examination of the case-marking systems in For-mosan languages is given in section 3. Section 4 takes up tracking behavior and syntacticcoding patterns of EICs in these languages. Section 5 probes into various types of func-tion of EICs. Section 6 is the conclusion.

2. DATA AND METHODOLOGY. The corpus data used for this study consistof prompted naturalistic discourse narrative texts (Pear and Frog stories) and conversationfragments produced by speakers of Tsou and Kavalan.5 These narrative stories and con-versation excerpts were taped and transcribed following the conventions in Du Bois et al.(1993). In Squliq, our corpus of texts, taken from the Formosan Language Archive inAcademia Sinica and from the NTU corpus of Formosan languages, consists of five Frogstories and twenty spontaneous narrative texts about legends and folk tales, whichtogether run to about 2 hours and 20 minutes. The corpora were then searched for utter-ances containing extended intransitive clauses (EIC) and other clause types—actor voiceand nonactor voice clauses. Building a corpus of narratives and conversations is part ofour NSC-sponsored Austronesian language project to study the interaction betweengrammar, discourse, and cognition in Formosan languages. We have chosen to investigatethese three languages in the present study for two main reasons. First, each of these lan-guages represents a different first order branch of the ten branches of the Austronesianfamily as reconstructed by Blust (1999), and second, we have built an (as yet fairly mod-est) corpus of narratives and conversations for each of them.

5. The Pear stories are narrative recordings of a six-minute film (made at the University of Cali-fornia at Berkeley in 1975) shown to speakers, who were then asked to tell what happened in it.The Frog stories are narrative recordings of informants talking about the adventures of a frogthat a boy keeps in a jar: informants recount the story based on a picture book (Mayer 1969).


Analyses of the distribution of actor voice (AV), patient voice (PV), locative voice(LV), and circumstantial voice (CV) main clauses in the database yield the relative fre-quencies given in table 1. The ma- clause type in Kavalan is ignored in the table. Thesefour clause types are known to typically occur at different frequencies: EICs are in the10–15 percent range; AV clauses are generally much more frequent, at 45–55 percent;PV clauses are the next most frequent, at 20–30 percent, followed by LV at 15–25 per-cent, and CV at around 5 percent. Kavalan has lost its CV, but developed a distinct ma-clause type characteristic of languages spoken on the east coast (including Eastern For-mosan, Puyuma, and Paiwan), and its PV has merged into LV, which is why the languagehas a larger proportion of LV clauses.

3. CASE-MARKING SYSTEMS. Most Formosan languages have two sets ofcase-markers, one for common nouns, and the other for personal nouns. The pronominalcase-marking systems are generally much more complex and elaborate than those forcommon nouns. Case-markers for common nouns are often further distinguished basedon such features as definiteness, humanness, visibility, and number (see Li 1997, L.Huang et al. 1998, and Ross 2006 for fuller discussions on case-marking systems in For-mosan languages, and Reid 2002 for the grammatical status of “case-markers” in thePhilippine languages). Squliq and Kavalan, like most Formosan languages, have a four-case system—nominative, oblique, genitive, and locative—in which genitive marks non-subject agent and possessor; oblique marks patient, source, and goal; and locative markslocation. There are two languages with a two-case system, each with different ranges ofcase functions: Tsou has a nominative-oblique system in which nominative marks sub-ject and oblique almost everything else, while Paran Seediq has a nominative versusergative/genitive system in which the case that marks the nonsubject agent (ergative) andthe case that marks possessor have the same form, na. What is unusual about ParanSeediq is that there is no oblique case, and patient-like arguments in AV clauses areexpressed by word order rather than by oblique case, as is normal with the Formosan lan-guages examined in this study (cf. Tsukida 2005 for Truku Seediq). Puyuma has anundisputable three-case system—nominative, oblique, and genitive—in which genitivemarks the nonsubject agent, nominative marks the grammatical subject, and obliquemarks other arguments (Teng 2008). Mayrinax Atayal was at one point described as hav-ing a nine-case system (L. Huang 1995), but was later revised to the much more commonthree-case system—nominative, oblique, and genitive (L. Huang et al. 1998). Saisiyat isargued by Zeitoun (2009) to have a six-case system—nominative, accusative, ergative/genitive, dative, locative, and comitative (cf. Hsieh and Huang 2006).

TABLE 1. DISTRIBUTION OF MAJOR CLAUSE TYPES

EIC AV PV LV CV TotalTsou 81

(11%)334

(46%)199

(27%)104

(14%)13

(2%)730

Kavalan 57(15%)

200(53%)

– 112(30%)

– 369

Squliq 111(8%)

586(40%)

305(21%)

356(25%)

87(6%)

1,445

Blake (2001:156) proposes that the minimal two-term case system is nominative ver-sus oblique, that individual cases can be ordered in a hierarchy, shown in (5), and furtherthat the hierarchy can be used to predict in what order case systems are expanded orreduced (cf. Silverstein 1993 for a similar analysis).

(5) NOM > ACC / ERG > GEN > DAT > LOC > ABL / INSTR > OTHERS

The hierarchy in (5) predicts that if a language has a case shown on the hierarchy, it willhave at least one case from each position to the left. While evidence from the Formosanlanguages does not directly challenge the hierarchy in (5), it does suggest that the initialexpansion in these languages begins with the split of oblique into oblique and ergative/genitive, and locative is generally acquired before accusative.6 Thus a nominative-oblique two-case system is represented by Tsou, and a three-case system, represented byPuyuma, is formed by splitting oblique into ergative/genitive. Expanding oblique intooblique versus ergative/genitive versus locative derives a four-term case system as seenin Squliq and Kavalan. A six-term system is formed by splitting the remaining functionsof oblique into accusative, dative, and comitative, as seen in Saisiyat.

As we have shown above, in Tsou, Kavalan, and Squliq, there is no distinct accusativecase; in Tsou, there is no distinct ergative/genitive case (for lexical nominals), and in Squliqour corpus data suggest that the genitive case-markers na’ / nqu’ appear to be losingground to the oblique marker squ’ (cf. L. Huang 2006). The oblique case in Tsou, Squliq,and Kavalan thus covers a wide range of functions, resulting in syncretism of thematicroles. For example, in these languages there is no spatial or causal directionality expressedin the case-marking system, as shown below (see also the discussion in Croft 1991:176).

Consider the functions of the various oblique case-markers. In Kavalan, tu(i) marks the Patient in EIC clauses:

(6) KAVALANrazat ’nay kawit tu sizi.person that <AV>pull OBL goat‘A man was pulling a goat along.’ (Pear 1:13)

(ii) marks the recipient or Theme in EIC clauses with verbs of transfer:(7) KAVALAN

bula-pa-iku tu kulus tu suani-ku.give.AV-FUT-1SG.NOM OBL clothes OBL sibling-1SG.GEN

‘I will give clothes to my brother/sister.’ (Fieldnotes)(iii) marks source or goal in motion clauses:

(8) KAVALANsituqaw tu paRin ’nay wasu a yau.look.up OBL tree that dog LNK that‘The dog looks up at the tree.’ (Frog 2:24)

6. In Kavalan, for example, the locative case-markers are ta-...-an for common nouns and -anfor personal nouns. In Squliq, the locative case-markers are sa and te. In both languages, thereis considerable overlap in function between the locative and the oblique cases, suggesting thatthe former, which has a much higher frequency of occurrence in texts, may be a later develop-ment from the latter.

(iv) as a derived function, behaves like a complementizer that marks a cause or result incausal and emotion clauses:

(9) KAVALANqena-lizaq-an tu p<n>akala-an-na tu biyat a yau.NMLZ-happy-NMLZ COMP <PFV>find-NMLZ-3SG.GEN OBL frog LNK that‘He felt happy that he found the frog.’ (Frog 4:103)

Oblique markers (ta/to) in Tsou can be used to(i) mark a patient in EICs:

(10) TSOUmo smotokʉ to fatu ’o jidensa-si.AV.AUX bump OBL rock NOM bike-3SG.GEN

‘His bike bumped into a rock.’ (Pear 2: 29)(ii) mark the theme in EICs with verbs of transfer:

(11) TSOUmi-’o mofi to yoskʉ to paicʉ.AV.AUX-1SG.NOM AV.give OBL fish OBL PN

‘I gave PaicU fish.’ (Fieldnotes)(iii) mark the Recipient in EICs with verbs of transfer:

(12) TSOUi-he cu patmʉta ho faeni ta himnonu ci oko.NAV-3PL ASP pick.up CONJ CV.give OBL owner REL child‘(They) were picked up by them and returned to the owner, the child.’

(Pear 3:49)(iv) mark the source or goal in EIC motion clauses:

(13) TSOUmaici la eueafo ta maica ci hpʉhpngʉ?why HAB AV.emerge OBL like.this REL place‘Why do (they) often emerge from a place like this?’ (Snake:102)

(v) mark the cause in EIC causal and emotion clauses:(14) TSOU

la-’u na’no ta’tutumzo ta oko-si.HAB-1SG.NOM AV.very AV.disappointed.with OBL child-3SG.GEN

‘He is very disappointed with his child.’ (Fieldnotes)(vi) mark the agent in NAV clauses:

(15) TSOUo-si cu ta’to’tohʉngva to cou.NAV-3SG ASP PV.think OBL man‘The man was thinking.’ (Bear:86)

The oblique marker squ’ in Squliq Atayal is used to (i) mark the patient in EIC clauses:

(16) SQULIQmita’ squ’ qoli’ ka kahul squ’ ska’ na’ bling na’ uraw.see.AV OBL mouse LNK emerge OBL middle GEN hole GEN soil‘(He) saw the mouse that came out of the burrow.’ (Frog 1:144–47)

(ii) mark the recipient/goal or theme in NAV clauses:(17) SQULIQ

s-biq-naha’ squ’ yumin qu’ rimuy qani la.CV-give-3PL.GEN OBL PN NOM PN DET FNP

‘They let Rimuy marry Yumin.’ (lit., ‘They gave Rimuy to Yumin.’)(Aki 3:264)

(18) SQULIQs<n>y-an-nya’ squ’ qutux biru’ qu’ kabang-nya’.<PFV>put-LV-3SG.GEN OBL one book NOM bag-3SG.GEN

‘He put a book in his bag.’ (Fieldnotes)(iii) mark source or goal in EIC motion clauses:

(19) SQULIQm<in>kahul squ’ p<in>sbk-an qu’ bnkis-ta’.AV.<PFV>come.from OBL <PFV>middle-LOCNMLZ NOM elder-1PL.GEN

‘Our ancestors came from Mt.Tabajian.’ (Fieldnotes)(20) SQULIQ

m-hkani’ squ’ p<in>qwas-an qu’ yumin k<r>ryax.AV-walk OBL <PFV>study-LOCNMLZ NOM PN <REDUP>day‘Yumin walks to school every day.’ (Fieldnotes)

The examples above show that the oblique case-markers tu in Kavalan and to/ta inTsou are used to encode location, cause, and recipient, which are typically noncore the-matic roles in languages like English, as well as core thematic roles such as agent (inNAV clauses in Tsou only), patient, and theme. Thus these oblique case-markers haveessentially the same functional range as the dative of the two-case system (nominative vs.dative) discussed in Silverstein (1993). Additional lines of evidence that tu in Kavalanand to/ta in Tsou are oblique markers come from the following considerations:1. Clitics: If the oblique case-markers to/ta/tu/squ’ were accusative case-markers, then

the NP marked by them would be a core argument, and we would expect the lan-guages to have developed a pronominal clitic for such a core argument, but there areno such pronominal clitics in these languages. In Kavalan, for example, there arenominative and genitive enclitics, but no oblique enclitics.

2. Syntactic coding: If there is a transitivity alternation between, say, an accusative-marked direct object and an oblique-marked peripheral object, the direct object inthe construction is the more affected entity. If an entity is more affected by the actiondenoted by the verb, then it is more centrally involved in what is being asserted thana less affected entity, and a more involved entity is more topical than a less involvedone. More topical arguments are generally coded with high continuity devices (zeroanaphora, clitics, pronouns) rather than medium continuity devices (lexical nouns ornoun phrases) or low continuity devices (modified nouns). If core and oblique argu-


ments differ in topicality, we would expect a strong association between argumenttype and syntactic coding. This is an issue we take up in section 4 below.

3. Tracking behavior: A universal characterization of the core/oblique distinction canbe had if we look at the tracking behavior of different types of arguments. If theoblique-marked NPs in a language were indeed core arguments, we would expectthe referents of these NPs to be tracked and thus to show strong topic persistence.We will take up the issue of tracking behavior in the following section and show thatthe referents of Es in EICs marked as oblique show little tracking.

4. TRACKING BEHAVIOR AND THE SYNTACTIC CODING OF Es.The core/oblique distinction has a discourse motivation in the differential tendencies ofargument NPs to be used to track referents. A, S, and O, as core arguments, are central todiscourse. They encode the entities that speakers talk about the most and that they wanttheir co-conversationalists to keep track of. Thus the core/oblique distinction, found inmany languages, can be explained by appealing to information flow properties of NPs indiscourse and relating these to properties of events and of lexical verbs. Cooreman, Fox,and Givón (1984), based primarily on data from Chamorro and Tagalog, attempted tocharacterize four clause types (antipassive, ergative, passive, and inverse) in terms of thepragmatic notion of relative topicality of the agent and patient arguments of the clause,although the issue of the core/oblique distinction was not their principal concern, nor wasit directly addressed in Givón (1983, 1992). Thompson (1997:59–82) explores the possi-bility of a cross-linguistic or universal characterization of the core/oblique distinction andoffers discourse motivations for the core/oblique distinction as a language universal.Oblique arguments are those that tend to be nonidentifiable and nongiven, serve mini-mally in tracking referents, are cognitively less salient, and are less likely to be recognizedby the grammar of a language as core arguments. The root ideas underlying Thompson’s(1997) proposal come from Du Bois (1987), who shows that ergative systems have a dis-course motivation in the differential tendencies for A, S, and O to carry new and giveninformation. A natural extension of this interpretation to the data at hand is to say thatcore NPs differ from oblique roles in terms of such information flow parameters as theirdifferential ability to track participants. An NP is being used to track participants if thespeaker is judged to be mentioning the NP to introduce a new referent, or to keep track ofa referent introduced earlier. In other contexts, an NP is considered a nontracking NP. Wedemonstrate below that the core/oblique distinction in the three languages under investi-gation can be shown to reflect this difference in information flow: core argument roles arethe salient ones for participant tracking, while oblique roles are not.

In the analyses that follow, we will use the following conventions:(21) TP = 0: if the oblique Es are not being used to track participants.

TP = 1: if an oblique E is taken up once in a subsequent clause in a coreargument position, either as a nominative- or genitive-marked NP,within the following 10 clauses.

TP = 2: if an oblique E is taken up in two subsequent clauses in a coreargument position within the following 10 clauses.

And so on.


The discourse functioning of E, in relation to core argument roles A, S, or O, emergesclearly if we run through a text example from the Pear narrative in Tsou illustrated in (22).

(22) TSOUaomane mo eupteʉlʉ to mo cihi ci mo maezoa.little.while AUX.AV come.across.AV OBL AUX.AV one REL AUX.AV also.AV

eon to jidensa ci mamespingi ho.ride OBL bike REL female CONJ

‘A short while later, he met a girl who was also riding a bike.’te yupa zou yupa-yupeʉlu.FUT RECIP DM RECIP-come.across.AV

‘That is, they met each other.’i-si apemza mi’usni na ito ahocngʉAUX.NAV-3SG.GEN focus.on.PV toward.LV FP OBL male’o mamespingi ho mo eupteʉlʉ.NOM female CONJ AUX.AV come.across.AV

‘When they met, the boy was staring at the girl intently.’cima mo kameosʉ i-si ta’poepzasuddenly AUX.AV all.of.a.sudden.AV AUX.NAV-3SG.GEN blow.off.PV

na ito na i’o ceopngu na ito hahocngʉ. mi-cu supeohʉ.FP FP PM NOM hat FP OBL male AUX.AV-PFV fall.AV

‘Suddenly, the boy’s hat blew off. (The hat) fell off.’o’a i-si maka aiti ho mo ea-fatua-aNEG AUX.NAV-3SG.GEN hardly see.PV CONJ AUX.AV EXIST-stone-A

’o nte- si mia.NOM FUT-3SG.GEN walk.PV

‘He didn’t even notice that there was a rock in his way he was about togo on.’ (Pear 1:45–54)

Here the narrator uses an EIC in the first two lines to “introduce” a new referent witha lexical NP ( the girl) in the E role of an intransitive verb eupteʉlu ‘come across,’ but asecond reference to this girl was never made within the next 10 clauses. In other words,the referent of this E was not tracked within the following 10 clauses.

Tables 2 and 3 show the tracking behavior of Es in two Tsou narrative texts, the Frogand Pear stories.Tables 2 and 3 show quite clearly that the oblique-marked Es in Tsou, intwo completely different sets of narrative data, share the commonality of not encodingreferents that are tracked and continuous, since 79 percent and 75 percent of the Es in the

TABLE 2. REFERENT TRACKING OF Es IN FROG NARRATIVES IN TSOU

TP = 0 TP = 1 TP = 2 TP = 3 TP = 4 TP > 4 TotalFrog 1 11 0 1 0 0 0 12Frog 2 6 1 1 0 0 0 8Frog 3 12 3 1 1 0 0 17Frog 4 9 1 0 0 0 0 10Frog 5 5 0 1 0 0 0 6Frog 6 2 0 0 2 0 0 4Total 45

(79%)5 4 3 0 0 57


respective Frog and Pear texts were not tracked at all. A finding like this would be consid-ered perfect replicability in experimental sciences. It is thus quite reasonable to suggest atthis point that the Es in Tsou are being treated as peripheral arguments. To strengthen ourargument, we need to also demonstrate that, by contrast, referents of Os—the nominative-marked patient nominals in NAVs—are significantly much more frequently tracked thanthose of Es. If that is demonstrated to be the case, then we will certainly have providedstrong evidence that the language has indeed grammaticized the core/oblique distinctionin EICs, where the peripheral arguments are oblique-marked, and core arguments, includ-ing Os, are marked otherwise. Before we turn to examining the tracking behavior of Os, itis important to note that tracking behavior is necessarily a scalar property, and Es in Tsouoccasionally can be used to track referents, as do many preposition-marked NPs (termed“oblique core arguments” in Van Valin and LaPolla 1997) in a language like English.Although tracking behavior can be quantified and thus is a scalar property, that, however,does not mean that the core/oblique distinction in the morphosyntax of a language is alsoscalar (cf. Arka 2005). It might be possible to identify the presence of such scales and per-haps attempt to designate their endpoints as oblique or core, though we do not considerthis a productive research strategy, an important reason being that such endpoints do notusually operate alone and can not by themselves constitute sufficient evidence for clinch-ing the status of an oblique or core argument (see further below).

Example (23) below illustrates an instance of TP=3 in Tsou in one Frog narrative,where an initial E reappears in three subsequent clauses as a core argument:

(23) TSOUmoso maezo aut’ʉcʉ to mo con-ci fo’kunge,AUX.AV also.AV raise OBL AUX.AV one.REL frogo-he la poekotva to pania ’e fo’kunge. TP = 1AUX.NAV-3SG HAB lock.up.PV OBL bottle NOM frogho i-he aut’ʉca. TP = 2CONJ AUX.AV-3SG raise.PV

moso con-ci feʉng’na, moso cu oengʉtʉ ’e oko ho e’ av’u,AUX.AV one-REL evening AUX.AV PFV sleep NOM child CONJ NOM dogma moso aasoe yuyafo ta pania ’o fo’kunge. TP = 3DM AUX.AV stealthy move.out OBL bottle NOM frog‘They kept a frog and locked it up in a bottle. And they kept it. Oneevening the boy and the dog went to sleep and the frog got out of thebottle stealthily.’ (Frog 3)

TABLE 3. REFERENT TRACKING OF Es IN PEAR NARRATIVES IN TSOU

TP = 0 TP = 1 TP = 2 TP = 3 TP = 4 TP > 4 TotalPear 1 6 0 1 0 0 0 7Pear 2 5 0 0 1 0 0 6Pear 3 5 1 0 0 0 0 6Pear 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 1Pear 5 1 0 1 0 0 0 2Pear 6 0 1 1 0 0 0 2Total 18

(75%)2 3 1 0 0 24


In Formosan languages, as in Philippine languages (Schachter 1977), there is no singleconstituent type with a clear preponderance of the subject properties that are commonlyassociated with subjects in other languages. Instead, the set of subject properties identifiedin Keenan (1976) can be divided into two subsets, each of which is associated with a dis-tinct constituent type—one subset associated with the agent, coded as the genitive NP ofan NAV, the other with the subject (or topic), usually coded as the nominative NP of an AV,EIC, or NAV. In the present context, since Os are nominative-marked argument nominalsin NAVs, they are expected to share some of the subject properties associated with the sub-ject in languages where the grammatical category subject is not in doubt. Thus Os, likesubjects, are expected to be more likely used to track referents, rather than simply to intro-duce referents. Table 4 contrasts the TP values of Es and Os in Frog narratives in Tsou. Achi-square test was run to determine if the tracking behaviors of Es and Os are significantlydifferent. A contingency table (table 5) was constructed, and a chi-square test showed thattracking behaviors of Es and Os in Frog narratives in Tsou are significantly different.

The same methodology was applied to the Pear narrative texts in Tsou. Table 6 showsthe values of TP of Es and Os in Tsou Pear texts, and a chi-square test on the data in table7 shows that the tracking behaviors of Es and Os in these Pear Texts were also sig-nificantly different (χ2 = 7.118 on df = 1 at .05 level). A separate Fisher Exact ProbabilityTest was applied to the data in table 7 and also yielded a scant one-tailed probability of p= 0.00691. These two test results together mean that we can reject the null hypothesiswith a comfortable degree of confidence, and conclude that Es and Os tend to be stronglyassociated with different tracking behaviors in Tsou.

The same methodology was applied to the narrative data in another language, Kavalan,to examine tracking behaviors of Es and Os. Results of the analyses are given in tables 8and 9. As table 9 shows, nearly all of the Es in the Kavalan Pear narratives failed to encode

TABLE 4. REFERENT TRACKING OF Es AND Os IN FROG NARRATIVES IN TSOU

TP = 0 TP = 1 TP = 2 TP = 3 TP = 4 TP > 4 TotalE O E O E O E O E O E O E O

Frog 1 11 3 0 2 1 2 0 2 0 2 0 5 12 16Frog 2 6 3 1 1 1 1 0 3 0 2 0 5 8 15Frog 3 12 8 3 5 1 2 1 1 0 4 0 4 17 24Frog 4 9 3 1 5 0 4 0 1 0 1 0 6 10 20Frog 5 5 2 0 1 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 4 6 10Frog 6 2 3 0 3 0 2 2 9 0 4 0 2 4 23Total 45

(79%)22

(20%)5 17 4 14 3 16 0 13 0 26 57 108

TABLE 5. CONTINGENCY TABLE FOR TWO DIFFERENT TP VALUES IN TSOU FROG NARRATIVES*

* χ2 = 6.389 > 3.841 on df = 1 at .05 level

TP = 0 TP > 0 TotalE 45 12 57O 22 86 108Total 67 98 165


referents that were tracked, since 85.5 percent of the Es were TP = 0, exactly as in Tsou.By contrast, 60 percent of the Es (9 out of 15) in the Frog narratives were used to track par-ticipants. An inspection of table 8 shows that narrator #5 of the Frog text alone contributed44 percent (4 out of 9) of these referent-tracking Es. What the data of Kavalan Frog narra-

TABLE 6. TP OF Es AND Os IN PEAR NARRATIVES IN TSOU


Pear 1 6 8 0 2 1 3 0 2 0 0 0 1 7 16Pear 2 5 3 0 3 0 2 1 2 0 0 0 0 6 10Pear 3 5 6 1 0 0 4 0 1 0 1 0 0 6 12Pear 4 1 7 0 3 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 12Pear 5 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 3 0 1 0 0 2 8Pear 6 0 5 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 9Total 18

(75%)29

(43%)2 12 3 13 1 9 0 2 0 2 24 67

TABLE 7. CONTINGENCY TABLE FOR TWO DIFFERENT TP VALUES IN TSOU PEAR NARRATIVES*

* χ2 = 7.118 > 3.841 on df = 1 at .05 level. Fisher ExactProbability Test one-tailed p = 0.00691.


TABLE 8. REFERENT TRACKING OF Es AND Os IN FROG NARRATIVES IN KAVALAN*

* χ2 = 4.32046 > 3.841 on df = 1 at .05 level.


Frog 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 2 0 0 1 5Frog 2 0 0 0 1 0 2 1 2 1 1 0 0 2 6Frog 3 4 0 0 2 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 5 6Frog 4 0 0 1 0 0 3 1 2 0 0 0 1 2 6Frog 5 1 0 1 3 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 2 5 6Total 6

(40%)0 2 7 2 9 3 6 1 3 1 4 15 29

TABLE 9. REFERENT TRACKING OF Es AND Os IN PEAR NARRATIVES IN KAVALAN


Pear 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 3 3Pear 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 3Pear 3 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 6Pear 4 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 4 3Total 6

(85.5%)0 0 3 0 1 0 5 1 4 0 2 7 15


tives showed was that Es in EICs can indeed be used to track participants, as in Tsou,although most Kavalan speakers of the Pear narratives, as expected, chose not to do so.

A chi-square test on the data in table 7 shows that the tracking behaviors of Es and Osin these Frog Texts in Kavalan were also significantly different, much as in the Tsou Frogtexts. A chi-square test was not performed on the Pear data, however, since, as shown intable 10, two of the four expected values are smaller than the required minimal value of 5,and it is generally known that chi-square procedures can be legitimately applied only ifall values of the expected frequencies are equal to or greater than 5. Yates’s correctionwas applied to the Pear data, yielding χ2

Yates = 14.376. A separate Fisher Test was alsoperformed, and the result shows that one-tailed p = 0.0000693. These results mean that,more so than with the Pear data in Tsou, we can reject the null hypothesis with an evenstronger degree of confidence, and conclude that Es and Os in the Pear and Frog texts inKavalan are also associated with significantly different tracking behaviors.

To summarize the preceding discussion, our investigation into the tracking behaviorof Es in EICs in both Tsou and Kavalan has shown that they serve minimally in partici-pant tracking. Based on the combined results shown in tables 4 through 10, it is safe toconclude that Es are oblique-marked peripheral arguments, that EICs are grammaticallyintransitive clauses, and that both Tsou and Kavalan have grammaticized the core/oblique distinction.

The tracking data from Squliq represent a set of new and challenging issues. Asnoted earlier, the oblique case-marker in this language was often absent from narrativedata, and so one might expect the Es in EICs not marked with an overt oblique markerto behave more like “direct objects,” namely core arguments, and thus to show a stron-ger topic persistence. In table 11, based on the twenty spontaneous narrative texts inSquliq mentioned earlier, two types of Es can be distinguished: those that are markedwith an overt oblique case-marker, and those whose oblique case-markers were absent.This was done in order to test whether the presence or absence of the oblique case-marker has any direct bearing on the tracking behavior of Es. Table 11 shows that justover 50 percent of the Es in Squliq were not marked with an oblique case, and that Es,

TABLE 10. TP VALUES OF Es AND Os IN KAVALAN PEAR TEXTS*

* χ2Yates

= 14.376 on df = 1 at .05 level. Fisher ExactProbability Test one-tailed p = 0.0000693.


TABLE 11. TP VALUES OF Es IN SQULIQ(BASED ON 20 NARRATIVE TEXTS)*

* χ2 = .086 on df = 1.

Case-marker TP=0 TP=1 TP=2 TP=3 TP=4 TP>4 TotalPresent 14 4 0 1 0 0 19Absent 16 5 0 2 0 0 23Total 30

(71.4%)9 0 3 0 0 42


regardless of whether they are case-marked or not, were doing little participant tracking,suggesting that speakers of the language were not taking the Es as cognitively saliententities in discourse such as to warrant the status of core arguments. A chi-square test (χ2

= .086) also shows that there is little association between the presence or absence ofcase-marking and the tracking behavior of Es.7

As in Tsou and Kavalan, the next question is to determine whether the referents of Esand Os are tracked differently in Squliq. Tables 12 and 13 present the tracking data for Esand Os in Frog narrative texts. In table 13, Os were also subclassified into those that weremarked with a nominative case and those that were not so marked. As with the trackingbehavior of Es, a chi-square test on the data in table 14 shows that the presence or absenceof the nominative case also has little bearing on the tracking behavior of Os. Of specialinterest is the fact that when another chi-square test was performed on the data in table 15,the result shows, somewhat unexpectedly, that there is little difference between Es and Osin their tracking behaviors.

7. The tracking behavior of Es in Squliq, whether they are case-marked or not, thus bears astriking resemblance to the tracking behavior of patient arguments in AV clauses in Seediq, alanguage genetically related to Squliq. Seediq does not have a separate EIC clause type,since there is no oblique case-marker in that language (see S. Huang 2002 for details).

TABLE 12. TP VALUES OF Es IN SQULIQ FROG NARRATIVES

TP=0 TP=1 TP=2 TP=3 TP=4 TP>4 TotalFrog 1 7 3 2 1 0 0 13Frog 2 4 1 0 1 1 0 7Frog 3 10 1 4 1 0 0 16Frog 4 5 4 1 2 0 0 12Frog 5 5 7 2 1 0 0 15Total 31(49%) 16 9 6 1 0 63

TABLE 13. TP VALUES OF Os IN SQULIQ FROG NARRATIVES*

* + = case-marker present; – = case-marker absent. χ2 = .319, df = 1.

TP=0 TP=1 TP=2 TP=3 TP=4 TP>4 TotalCase + – + – + – + – + – + – + –Frog 1 4 5 8 1 3 1 2 3 2 0 0 0 19 10Frog 2 7 2 3 1 4 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 17 4Frog 3 5 1 4 2 2 1 3 1 0 0 0 1 14 6Frog 4 10 2 7 3 1 0 3 1 0 0 0 0 21 6Frog 5 11 3 8 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 23 4Sum 37 13 30 7 12 3 9 5 4 1 2 1 94 30Total 50

(40.3%)37 15 14 5 3 124

TABLE 14. TP OF Es AND Os IN SQULIQ FROG TEXTS*

* χ2 = 1.343, df = 1.



An important question that naturally arises at this point is: How low a percentage canTP = 0 get before we would want to say that the oblique case in question has developedinto an accusative, and thus the language is commencing to lose the core/oblique distinc-tion, at least in this area of the grammar? Based on the tracking data presented thus far inthe three languages under investigation here, one can offer the following tentative answer.

The core/oblique distinction, of the type being examined in the present study, wouldseem to begin to dissolve both when the TP = 0 value of Es dips below the 50 percentmark, and also when the tracking behavior of the Es in a language can be shown to beindistinguishable from that of the Os in NAV clauses. At that point, the language wouldstart to develop two types of transitive clauses, and would be likely to exhibit split ergativity,conditioned by aspect or some other grammatical categories. Note that the nominative-marked NPs in Formosan languages are traditionally considered the “subjects” of these lan-guages and should thus exhibit at least some of the standard subject properties familiar inthe literature, for instance, a stronger propensity for topic persistence, and the ability to actas pivots in interclausal cross-referencing, albeit in a more muted fashion, in comparisonwith the more topical As or Ss.

What table 14 has shown is that Es and Os in Squliq exhibit little difference in theirability to track participants. Since nominative-marked Os in Squliq are core arguments bydefinition, then clearly Es must also be interpreted as functioning like incipient core argu-ments, if the core argument status is measured solely in terms of the metric of trackingbehavior. Similarity of Es to Os in tracking behavior, however, does not yet allow them tobridge their other differences, for example, in syntactic coding patterns. Differences in syn-tactic coding patterns reported below suggest that Es in Squliq must be recognized as setapart from Os and that Es have not quite yet attained the status of a core argument. We turnnext to briefly considering the issue of syntactic coding.

As is commonly known, more topical arguments are generally coded with high conti-nuity devices (zero anaphora, clitics, pronouns) rather than with medium or low continu-ity devices (lexical nouns, noun phrases, or modified nouns). If core and obliquearguments truly differ in topicality, we should also expect a strong association betweenargument type and syntactic coding. Since there is little doubt, given the evidence pre-sented above, that Tsou and Kavalan have fully grammaticized a core/oblique distinctionin their grammars, we examine only the coding patterns in Squliq below, in part becausethe Squliq data seem to be more open to various interpretations, and in part because ofconsiderations of coherence and space. Table 15 presents the syntactic coding patterns forall possible argument types, S, A, O, and E. As expected, As and Ss are highly topical,

TABLE 15. SYNTACTIC CODING OF NPs IN SQULIQ FROG NARRATIVES

AV EIC NAVS S E A O

H (zero/pro) 146(47%)

37(61%)

0 165(86%)

80(42%)

M (lexical noun) 144(47%)

20(33%)

51(84%)

27(14%)

94(49%)

L (modified noun) 19(6%)

4(6%)

10(16%)

0 18(9%)

Total 309 61 61 192 192


while Es are the most discontinuous of all argument types in Squliq, and the differencesin coding patterns between E and O, in particular, are statistically significant (χ2 = 37.174,df = 2).

Patterns of syntactic coding of the sort illustrated in table 15 are known to be far moretype-independent and are found in ergative as well as accusative languages. They are thusmore in the domain of grammatical types, whereas the tracking behavior of Es and Osexamined in the present study is limited to the Frog narrative texts, and thus belongs morein the domain of frequencies of tokens in discourse. While grammar and discourse cer-tainly evolve together, it is also true that grammatical types are the precipitate of recur-rently employed occurrences of tokens in discourse, yielding in the final outcomegrammatical organization such as the patterns of syntactic coding discussed here. To theextent we examine the tracking behavior of Es and Os in a larger database, new findingswill probably emerge that bring the tracking behavior of Es and Os into closer conformityto the expected coding patterns. If this line of thinking is correct, then what the Squliq datashow is that a stronger interpretation of Es, as a core argument more or less on a par withOs in this language, would contravene the facts about their significant differences in pat-terns of syntactic coding, and thus a weaker interpretation is to be preferred—that Es areset apart from Os, and are best analyzed as oblique arguments.

We have, then, established, with the proviso noted immediately above, that the Es inthe three languages examined are obliques, though, as shown above, their trackingbehaviors vary from one language to another. Tsou may be said to exhibit the cleanestcase of a language where Es and Os are clearly significantly distinct in their ability totrack participants. None of the 12 speakers in the Tsou Frog and Pear narratives werefound to do any tracking with Es. By contrast, while nearly all of the Es in the KavalanPear narratives failed to encode referents that were tracked—exactly as in Tsou—60 per-cent of the Es in the Frog narratives were used to track participants. Squliq tracking datarepresent yet another pattern. We showed in table 14 that Es and Os in the Frog narrativesin this language exhibit no significant difference in their ability to track participants, andalso noted earlier that Es might be functioning like an incipient core argument. We thenturned to a consideration of patterns of syntactic coding in this language and concludedthat a weaker interpretation is to be preferred—that Es are set apart from Os, and are bestanalyzed as oblique arguments.8

5. FUNCTIONS OF THE EIC. Having established that the Es in Tsou, Kavalan,and Squliq are obliques, we next ask: What are the pragmatic functions of the EIC? Whatmotivates its existence vis-à-vis AV or NAV? There is surely a clear discourse motivationfor the use of EICs, beyond the local semantic ones. In all of the three languages, Es ofEICs may on occasion be selected because they allow a new entity to be introduced, and,

8. An anonymous reviewer raises the important point that different arguments marked by thesame oblique marker do not necessarily have the same grammatical status. An oblique-markedargument in an EIC may not be as “oblique” or “peripheral” as other oblique-marked argu-ments. Arka (2005) has shown that there is a cline from core to noncore oblique in Indonesianand Balinese. In a similar vein, A. Chang (2006), based on a battery of syntactic tests, showsthat the oblique in Paiwan exhibits some degree of core argument properties. Our discussion inthe preceding section is meant to address this issue in the context of Squliq discourse data.


as we have noted above, for some speakers (for example, narrator #5 of the Kavalan Frogtexts), introducing a new participant into discourse through an EIC appears to be astrongly preferred strategy, to the near exclusion of other obvious alternatives such as AV,existential, or even NAV.

Although the EIC is a robust clause type and, from a formal point of view, is a relativelyuniform phenomenon across Formosan and Philippine languages, its function can beshown to vary quite considerably from language to language.9 For example, the Es differ intheir definiteness across the three languages compared here. Es in EICs in Tsou are pre-dominantly nonreferential, though occasionally referential and new, so they can accommo-date the introduction of new, but primarily nonhuman, characters into discourse, whilehuman protagonists are mostly introduced via the existential construction. In Kavalan andSquliq, there is no decided preference to introduce new human or nonhuman animate char-acters via either EIC or the existential construction. In Squliq, Os and Es are referentiallynearly indistinguishable: just over 50 percent of the Os and Es are referentially definite, asshown in table 16, where the presence or absence of case-markers on Es is also taken intoaccount. In Kavalan, the Es are also predominantly definite in reference, as shown in table17. In both languages, then, there is an obvious lack of definiteness effects of Es.10

A question often raised in connection with EICs is: Do EICs function like antipas-sives? Cooreman (1994:52) argues that the most common use of the antipassive in the

9. See Tanangkingsing (2009) for discussion on the discourse properties of EIC in Cebuano, aPhilippine language.

10. Of the three languages studied here, speakers of Kavalan exhibit the strongest tendency totreat new information as given or even definite when they are introducing apparently newentities into discourse, a phenomenon noted in Du Bois (1987:839) and termed an “initializa-tion effect.” Example (iii) is an illustration from a Kavalan Pear text:(iii) KAVALAN

Raylikuz-na uman nani yau-ti sunis ’nay qa-zitinsya.behind-3SG.GEN again DM EXIST-PFV child that QA-bicycle‘Behind him there is also a child riding a bicycle.’

In this example, the existential yauti construction is used to introduce a new entity (the child),and yet ’nay, a demonstrative meaning ‘that’, is also used. This initialization effect is alsoobservable in EICs.

TABLE 16. REFERENTIAL PROPERTIES OF Es IN SQULIQ FROG TEXTS

+definite –definite[+case mkr] [–case mkr] Total [+case mkr] [–case mkr] Total

E 57(47%)

7(6%)

64(53%)

47(38%)

11(9%)

58(47%)

O 174(26%)

207(31%)

381(57%)

75(11%)

216(32%)

291(43%)

TABLE 17. REFERENTIAL PROPERTIES OF Es INKAVALAN NARRATIVES

Pear and Frog combined+definite 58 (64%)–definite/+referential 28 (31%)–referential 4 (4%)Total 90

world’s ergative languages is to indicate a low degree of identifiability of O, which sheterms the indefinite antipassive. As we have seen, Kavalan and Squliq do not work thisway at all.

A second observation by Cooreman (1994) is that the antipassive frequently occurs indiscourse when the event described is incomplete, or nonpunctual. Again, EICs inSquliq show the opposite, and completely unexpected, effect. While a majority of thetransitive NAVs occur with imperfective aspect, a great majority of intransitive EICsoccur with perfective makers, as shown in table 18. We do not have any explanation forthis quite unusual distributional property, and a systematic study of EICs and patterns oftheir cooccurrence patterns with tense, aspect, and modality is warranted.

A third function that Cooreman (1994) identifies is that the antipassive may be moti-vated for purely “structural” reasons. In a deep ergative language, referentially identicalarguments across sentences have to be absolutive, and the antipassive is used to conformto the constraint. Can we identify a purely “structural” EIC? Interclausal coreference inTsou, Kavalan, and Squliq follows the accusative pattern (S/A), though the much rarerergative pattern (S/O) is also possible. This means that EICs cannot be said to be moti-vated purely by the requirements for coreference maintenance. But EICs may be shownto be motivated at least in part by clause linkage. Use of the EIC as an embedded clause is“required” by certain matrix verbs, as in the Kavalan data in (24), where the matrix verbis mangu ‘help’ and the main verb in the EIC is kiara (<AV>pick.up).

(24) KAVALANmangu timaizipna kiara tu ni-qa-tabuk-an na byabasAV.help 3SG.OBL <AV>pick.up OBL PFV-QA-spill-NMLZ GEN guavaa yau ta-razan-an.LIG that LOCNMLZ-road-LOCNMLZ

‘(He) helped him pick up the guavas that spilled on the road.’ (Pear_imui )

Earlier in the narrative, the narrator used an LV sentence with the same verb root kiara‘to pick up’ to describe the same scene.

(25) KAVALANkiara-an-na-ti ’nay byabas a yau pizia-an-napick.up-LV-3SG.GEN-PFV that guava LIG that put-LV-3SG.GEN

ta-qaypi-an nani.LOCNMLZ-basket-LOCNMLZ DM

‘He picked up the guavas and put (them) in the basket.’ (Pear_imui)What differentiates (24) and (25) is that, in (24), the verb root kiara occurs embedded in aserial verb construction (SVC), while it is the main verb of a conjunct in a coordinate

TABLE 18. USE OF ASPECT MARKERS IN VARIOUS CLAUSES IN SQULIQ

AV / EIC NAVAV EIC Total PV LV CV Total

perfective 297(51%)

81(62%)

378(54%)

108(35%)

164(46%)

44(51%)

316(41%)

imperfective 289(49%)

30(38%)

319(46%)

197(65%)

192(54%)

43(49%)

432(59%)

Total 586 111 697 305 356 87 748

structure in (25). A structural requirement in a SVC in Kavalan holds that, if the first verbappears in an AV form, then the subsequent verb or verbs must also be in an AV form(see Yeh and Huang 2009 for further discussion).

A further “structural” property of the EIC is shown by the fact that it can serve as inputto relative clause formations that relativize on the nominative NP or the oblique NP, asillustrated in (26) and (27).

(26) KAVALANme-raziu tayta-an-na qiala tu byabas.AV-pass look.at-LV-3SG.GEN <AV>pick.up OBL guava‘(He) passed by and looked at (the person) picking guavas.’ (Pear_imui)

(27) TSOUmo maezo bohngʉ ta moso la aʉt’ʉcʉ.AUX.AV AV.also recognize OBL AV HAB AV.raise‘(The frog) also recognized (the person) who raised it.’ (Frog 3:103)

In (26), the object of the verb expression tayta-an-na ‘look.at-LV-3SG.GEN’ must be in thenominative case for it to be modified by the following EIC, although the nominative-marked head noun did not appear in the narrative. Similarly, in (27) the oblique ta-markedNP may be followed by a potential EIC—the verb aʉt’ʉcʉ ‘AV.raise’ may take anE—though again the oblique ta-marked NP did not appear in the narrative.

Beyond the structural motivations just noted, the EICs in these languages are primarilyused to highlight the activity associated with the main verbs and to indicate that they are insome sense “subject-oriented” rather than object-oriented like the canonical NAV con-struction, since, as we have seen in the preceding sections, the Es in EICs serve minimallyin participant tracking. They may, of course, be used to introduce new, or reintroduce old,participants into discourse, but these are generally not the primary functions of EICs, andthat is precisely the feature that sets them apart from AV or from NAV.

6. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. In this study, we are concernedto show how one can provide convincing discourse evidence for the core/oblique distinc-tion in three Formosan languages. We have investigated the discourse-functional proper-ties of EICs in relation to other clause types in Tsou, Kavalan, and Squliq, anddemonstrated, by examining the roles of EICs in participant tracking, that the core/oblique distinction arose in a systematic way from recurrent patterns in discourse in theselanguages. In contrast to canonical transitive NAVs, EICs in these languages are shownto be grammatically intransitive. The tracking data of Es in both Tsou and Kavalan pro-vide indisputable evidence for their status as peripheral arguments. The data on the track-ing behavior in Squliq raise the question of whether Es in this language might beincipient core arguments, but an examination of their syntactic coding patterns suggeststhat the core/oblique distinction must be interpreted to also hold in Squliq grammar. Twofindings in the Squliq data prove to be quite surprising, yet equally instructive: on the onehand, regardless of whether or not Es are case-marked, there is a total absence of theeffect of case-marking on the tracking behavior of Es; on the other hand, a great majorityof the intransitive EICs are found to cooccur with perfective markers, contrary to theorthodox understanding of the properties of EIC.


What does the tracking behavior of EICs suggest for the choice of a grammatical caseof a nominal argument? It suggests that the case-marking of a nominal depends not onthe transitivity of the governing verb alone, but on all the discourse properties of a clausein the discourse context within which the verb and the nominal to be case-marked arelocated. This is more or less to be expected, since trackable referents are more likely to besalient in the mind of the speaker, but saliency resides not in the verb, nor in the nominal,but in the unfolding discourse itself at the point of planning for the production of a dis-course fragment.

The EICs, as a robust clause type, are from a formal point of view a uniform phenom-enon, but their functions show important differences in pragmatic deployment, both fromone another, and from the structurally analogous antipassive constructions examined inCooreman (1994). We have identified a variety of discourse functions of EIC: they canhighlight the activity associated with the verb in conjunction with the oblique NP; theycan be used to introduce a new entity into discourse; and they have the more “structural”properties of allowing clause linkage, verb serialization, and relative clause formation towork properly in environments when called upon.

The nature of case-marking patterns in a language must first address the issue of thedichotomy of transitivity and intransitivity, but often that issue can be satisfactorilyresolved only by investigating the discourse-functional properties of the relevant clausetypes. However much one might intuit that some kind of semantic or syntactic transitivityis present in a given clause type, only a discourse approach like the one we have followedin this study permits any degree of confidence in discerning the nature of its transitivity.We can learn a great deal about transitivity in a language by studying transitivity alterna-tions in a discourse context, in the present case between AV, EIC, and NAV.

The present findings, based on discourse-pragmatic evidence from three Formosanlanguages, show that argument structure and thus transitivity emerges partly as a functionof discourse pragmatics. These findings strongly suggest that case-markers that have beenanalyzed as accusative markers in other Formosan languages such as Paiwan (cf. Tang2002), Amis (cf. Wu 2000, 2006), Mayrinax Atayal (cf. L. Huang 1995), and perhaps afew other languages, are best reanalyzed as oblique markers, except for possibly Saisiyat,which can be shown to be a split-ergative language. Siraya has a three-case system forcommon nouns: nominative, default, and locative (Adelaar 2006), though the default caseappears to have basically the same functional range as the oblique case in a language likeTsou. Pazih is a four-case language for common nouns: nominative, genitive, oblique,and locative (Li and Tschida 2002:12); however, an analysis of the first seven narrativetexts in Li and Tsuchida (2002) shows that the oblique u and the genitive ni are attestedonly once each in the seven texts examined.

Ross (2006) reconstructs a five-case system for Proto-Austronesian (PAN), in additionto neutral case: nominative, genitive, accusative, oblique, and locative. His evidence forpositing accusative case for PAN comes primarily from Amis (Wu 1995) and Kavalan(Chang 2000).11 Wu (2006) has since revised her earlier analysis of the case system ofAmis, which is now interpreted as a language with a three-case system for commonnouns: nominative, genitive, and dative. And, as argued in Liao (2002) and demonstratedin the preceding discussion, tu in Kavalan is best analyzed as an oblique marker, given


that it is rarely used to track participants. The case for an accusative case in PAN appearsto us to rest on shaky grounds.12

Everything taken together, the results presented in the discussion above imply thatpatterns of core/oblique argument categorization have been highly stable across mostFormosan languages, and are thus indicative of deep genetic relationships. This, ofcourse, coincides with our understanding of the history of the Austronesian languagefamily (Blust 1999; Sagart 2004; Ross 2009; cf. Nichols 1992).

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A Discourse Explanation of the Transitivity Phenomena in Kavalan, Squliq, and Tsou

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