Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-54qdv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T23:57:30.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Timothy McKinnon ,
Peter Cole  and
Gabriella Hermon
Timothy McKinnon*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Peter Cole*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Gabriella Hermon*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
*
[mckinnon@udel.edu], [pcole@udel.edu], [gaby@udel.edu]
[mckinnon@udel.edu], [pcole@udel.edu], [gaby@udel.edu]
[mckinnon@udel.edu], [pcole@udel.edu], [gaby@udel.edu]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Kerinci is a group of grammatically diverse Malayic varieties spoken in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. This article focuses on a previously undescribed dialect of Kerinci, spoken in the village of Tanjung Pauh Mudik (TPM). Many Kerinci dialects have developed a morphological alternation in root-final syllables as a result of stress-related diachronic changes. In TPM, as in Sungai Penuh Kerinci (described by Steinhauer and Usman (1978), inter alia), lexical roots surface in two forms, termed ‘absolute’ and ‘oblique’, which differ in the phonological shape of their final syllable. These forms exhibit a wide array of grammatical properties that differ considerably between dialects. We focus on the function of this unique marking in the verbal domain, and argue that the oblique form marks agreement with a nominal complement. Our analysis explains why TPM, a language that retains the morphological properties of the traditional Malay voice system, unexpectedly appears to permit the extraction of nonsubject arguments from active clauses, contradicting the predictions of theories that causally link symmetrical voice morphology and a ban on nonsubject extraction from vP (e.g. Keenan 1972, 1979, Rackowski & Richards 2005, Cole et al. 2008). We argue that apparent cases of nonsubject extraction do not involve movement, but that the apparently moved argument is generated outside of vP and binds a phonologically null pronoun licensed by the oblique morphology; thus, we are able to relate TPM's unexpected syntactic behavior to the availability of the absolute/oblique marking. This analysis has broader consequences for the theory of pro-drop. Neeleman and Szendrői's (2007) theory of radical pro-drop is unable to differentiate between syntactically projected pronouns (like null objects in TPM) and nonobject pro-dropped arguments in TPM that lack the behavior of a syntactically projected argument. In light of this inadequacy, we put forward an alternative proposal regarding the universal typology of pro-drop.

Keywords

voiceagreementpro-dropKerinciMalayAustronesian

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 87 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 715 - 750
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adelaar, Karl A. 1992. Proto-Malayic: The reconstruction of its phonology and parts of its morphology and lexicon. (Pacific linguistics C-119.) Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Aldridge, Edith. 2004. Ergativity and word order in Austronesian languages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University dissertation.Google Scholar
Aldridge, Edith. 2008. Phase-based account of extraction in Indonesian. In Cole & Hermon, 1440–69.Google Scholar
Alsagoff, Lubna. 1992. Topic in Malay: The other subject. Stanford, CA: Stanford University dissertation.Google Scholar
Aman, Norhaida. 1999. How to ask what in Malay: The acquisition of wh-questions in Singapore Malay. Newark: University of Delaware dissertation.Google Scholar
Aoun, Joseph, and Choueiri, Lina. 1999. Modes of interrogation. Los Angeles: University of Southern California, ms.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aoun, Joseph, Choueiri, Lina; and Hornstein, Norbert. 2001. Resumption, movement, and derivational economy. Linguistic Inquiry 32. 371–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arka, I Wayan. 2002. Voice systems in the Austronesian languages of Nusantara: Typology, symmetricality and undergoer orientation. Linguistik Indonesia 21.1.113–39.Google Scholar
Arka, I Wayan, and Manning, Christopher D.. 1998. Voice and grammatical relations in Indonesian: A new perspective. Proceedings of the LFG '98 Conference. Online: http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/3/arka-manning.html.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 2008. The syntax of agreement and concord. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bender, Byron W. 1971. Micronesian languages. Current trends in linguistics 8: Linguistics in Oceania, ed. by Sebeok, Thomas A., 426–65. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, and Mchombo, Sam A.. 1987. Topic, pronoun, and agreement in Chichewa. Language 63. 741–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1977. On wh-movement. Formal syntax, ed. by Culicover, Peter, Wasow, Thomas, and Akmajian, Adrian, 71–132. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chung, Sandra. 1976. An object-creating rule in Bahasa Indonesia. Linguistic Inquiry 7. 41–87.Google Scholar
Chung, Sandra. 2008. Indonesian clause structure from an Austronesian perspective. In Cole & Hermon, 1554–82.Google Scholar
Cole, Peter, and Hermon, Gabriella (eds.) 2008. Malay/Indonesian syntax from an Austronesian perspective. Special issue of Lingua 118.10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, Peter, Hermon, Gabriella; and Yanti, . 2008. Voice in Malay/Indonesian. In Cole & Hermon, 1500–553.Google Scholar
Coppock, Elizabeth, and Wechsler, Stephen. 2012. The objective conjugation in Hungarian: Agreement without phi features. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, to appear.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dempwolff, Otto. 1938. Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes, Band 3: Austronesisches Wörterverzeichnis. (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen 19.) Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.Google Scholar
Fodor, Janet D. 1993. Processing empty categories: A question of visibility. Cognitive models of speech processing: The second Sperlonga meeting, ed. by Altmann, Gerry T. M. and Shillcock, Richard, 351–400. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Fodor, Janet D. 1995. Comprehending sentence structure. An invitation to cognitive science: Language, ed. by Osherson, Daniel N., Gleitman, Lila R., and Liberman, Mark, 209–46. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Georgopoulos, Carol. 1991. Syntactic variables: Resumptive pronouns and A' binding in Palauan. (Studies in natural language & linguistic theory 24.) Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gil, David. 2012. Riau Indonesian: A language without nouns and verbs. Flexible word classes, ed. by Rijkhoff, Jan and Lier, Eva van. Oxford: Oxford University Press, to appear.Google Scholar
Guilfoyle, Eithne, Hung, Henrietta; and Travis, Lisa. 1992. Spec of IP and Spec of VP: Two subjects in Austronesian languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 10. 375–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2005. The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar: Typological characteristics. The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar, ed. by Adelaar, Alexander and Himmelmann, Nikolaus P., 110–81. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. James. 1989. Pro-drop in Chinese: A generalized control theory. The null subject parameter, ed. by Jaeggli, Osvaldo and Safir, Kenneth J., 185–214. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1993. The role of conceptual structure in argument selection: A reply to Emonds. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 11. 279–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaeggli, Osvaldo. 1980. Remarks on to contraction. Linguistic Inquiry 11. 239–45.Google Scholar
Jaeggli, Osvaldo. 1984. Subject extraction and the null subject parameter. North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 14. 132–53.Google Scholar
Josephs, Lewis. 1975. Palauan reference grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1972. Relative clause formation in Malagasy (and some related and some not so related languages). The Chicago which hunt: Papers from the Relative Clause Festival, ed. by Peranteau, Paul M., Levi, Judith N., and Phares, Gloria C., 169–89. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1979. Predicate-argument structure in Malagasy. Grammatical relations: Theoretical approaches to empirical issues, ed. by Burgess, Clifford S., Dziwirek, Katarzyna, and Gerdts, Donna B., 171–217. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 2000. Some syntactic and morphological properties of relative clauses in Turkish. The syntax of relative clauses, ed. by Alexiadou, Artemis, Law, Paul, André, Meinunger and Wilder, Chris, 121–59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 2008. Subject case and Agr in two types of Turkic RCs. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics (Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL4) 55. 145–68.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard K. 1988. On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19. 565–99.Google Scholar
Mchombo, Sam. 2001. Effects of head-marking on constituent order in Chichewa. Proceedings of the LFG '01 Conference. Online: http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/6/lfg01mchombo.pdf.Google Scholar
McKinnon, Timothy A. 2011. The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci word shape alternations. Newark: University of Delaware dissertation.Google Scholar
Neeleman, Ad, and Szendrői, Kriszta. 2007. Radical pro drop and the morphology of pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 38. 671–714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, Matthew. 2005. The Malagasy subject/topic as an A'-element. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 23. 381–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prentice, D. J., and Usman, Amir Hakim. 1978. Kerinci sound-changes and phonotactics. Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, fascicle 1: Western Austronesian (Pacific linguistics C-61), ed. by Wurm, Stephen A. and Carrington, Lois, 121–63. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Rackowski, Andrea, and Richards, Norvin. 2005. Phase edge and extraction: A Tagalog case study. Linguistic Inquiry 36.4.565–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saddy, Douglas. 1991. Wh-scope mechanisms in Bahasa Indonesia. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics (More papers on wh-movement) 15. 183–218.Google Scholar
Schachter, Paul. 1984. Semantic-role-based syntax in Toba Batak. Studies in the structure of Toba Batak (UCLA occasional papers in linguistics 5), ed. by Schachter, Paul, 122–49. Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Sells, Peter. 1984. Syntax and semantics of resumptive pronouns. Amherst: University of Massachusetts dissertation.Google Scholar
Sneddon, James N. 1996. Indonesian: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Siewierska, Anna. 1999. From anaphoric pronoun to grammatical agreement marker: Why objects don't make it. Folia Linguistica 33.2.225–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, Susan. 1978. Word order variation: A typological study. Universals of human language, vol. 4: Syntax, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., Ferguson, Charles A., and Moravcsik, Edith A., 585–623. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Steinhauer, Hein. 2002. More (on) Kerinci sound changes. Between worlds: Linguistic papers in memory of David John Prentice, ed. by Adelaar, K. Alexander and Blust, Robert, 149–76. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Steinhauer, Hein, and Usman, Amir Hakim. 1978. Notes on the morphemics of Kerinci (Sumatra). Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, fascicle 1: Western Austronesian (Pacific linguistics C-61), ed. by Wurm, Stephen A. and Carrington, Lois, 483–502. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Tadmor, Uri. 2002. Language contact and the homeland of Malay. Paper presented at the sixth International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics (ISMIL 6), Pulau Bintan, Indonesia, August 3–5.Google Scholar
Tjung, Yassir Nasanius. 2006. The formation of relative clauses in Jakarta Indonesian: A subject-object asymmetry. Newark: University of Delaware dissertation.Google Scholar
Usman, Amir Hakim. 1988. Fonologi dan morfologi Bahasa Kerinci dialek Sungai Penuh. Jakarta: Universitas Indonesia dissertation.Google Scholar
Van Reijn, E. O. 1976. The reduction of diphthongs to cardinal vowels in the dialects of North-Kerintji (Sumatra). Actes du XXIXe Congres International des Orientalistes Indonésie 3. 173–76.Google Scholar
Woolford, Ellen. 2000. Object agreement in Palauan. Formal problems in Austronesian morphology and syntax, ed. by Paul, Ileana, Phillips, Vivianne, and Travis, Lisa, 215–45. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Yasin, Anas. 1983. Outline of Kerinci grammar with particular emphasis on wh-questions. Athens: Ohio University masters thesis.Google Scholar
Zeller, Jochen. 2005. Universal principles and parametric variation: Remarks on formal linguistics and the grammar of Zulu. Ingede 1.3.Google Scholar