Speaker: Yvette Yi-Chi Wu (Harvard)
Title: Morphological decomposition in Austronesian voice: evidence for intermediary movement
Time: Tuesday, September 23rd, 1pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: This talk takes a morphological starting point to Austronesian voice, and argues in favor of positing several distinct syntactic projections whose various combinations give rise to surface voice alternations (cf. Pearson 2005, Travis 2010). In particular, this includes 1) the functional projection E(vent), responsible for (non-)finite and (ir)realis marking, and 2) functional projections M(iddle)T(opic) (cf. LaCerda 2020) and Appl (cf. Georgala 2012), responsible for argument advancement as a sort of “leapfrogging” movement (Bobaljik 1995). Evidence comes from affix ordering of verbal morphemes, morphological decomposition in indicative and irrealis voice paradigms, and the distribution of voice markers in clausal complementation in Seediq and other Formosan languages. This is ongoing work as part of a dissertation on Austronesian voice in Seediq [Taiwan; Atayalic], and its implications on movement within the extended Voice domain.