Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 55

treatment in this construction. In Acehnese, on the other hand, this neu­
tralization applies in all clauses regardless of the transitivity of the verb, and
non-macrorole arguments may be involved in the construction, as illus­
trated in (36) with raising. It is, therefore, a general neutralization of the
opposition among core arguments.
(36) a. Gopnyan teuntèe [geu-woe].
3SG certain -return
"(S)he is certain to return."
b. Gopnyan teuntèe [meungang-geuh].
3SG certain win-3u
"(S)he is certain to win."
 Gopnyan teuntèe [geu-beuethikayat prang sabi].
3SG certain -recite epic
"He is certain to recite the Prang Sabi epic."
d. Hikay at prang sabi teuntèe [geu-beuet].
epic certain -recite
"The Prang Sabi epic is certain to be recited by him."
e. Gopnyan lôn-anggap [na neu-bi pèng baroe].
3SG lsG-consider BE 2A-give money yesterday
"I believe him to have been given money by you yesterday."
(lit.: "I consider hin^ [you gave money [to] ¡ yesterday].")
The actor of the dependent intransitive verb appears in clause-initial posi­
tion in (36a), the undergoer of an intransitive verb in (36b), the actor of a
transitive verb in (36c), the undergoer of a transitive verb in (36d), and the
dative argument of a three-argument verb in (36e). Thus the neutralization
found in these Acehnese examples is not like the kind found in English and
most other languages and does not support the postulation of grammatical
relations like subject and direct object. Rather, the grammar of Acehnese
operates with the concepts of actor, undergoer and core argument.
Acehnese is very significant for theories of predicate-argument rela­
tions, for two reasons. First, it exemplifies the rare type of language in
which there is no evidence for the postulation of grammatical relations in
addition to semantic predicate-argument relations; it is therefore evidence
that grammatical relations are not universal in the first sense discussed in
section 4.1. Second, the generalizations regarding Acehnese syntax formu­
lated by Durie would not be possible without macroroles. If they were