Voice 253
Because it is not always an agent which is the highest-ranking argument, the
term ‘actor’, coined by Benton (1971), has been generally adopted to describe
the relevant argument.
However, it is more than just a linking of highest-ranking argument to the
grammatical function subject that is indicated by actor voice morphology. There
are intransitive clauses in which the verb does not take actor voice morphology
even though the subject is an apparent agent entar ‘go’ (10) and dhateng ‘come’
(11) and other clauses with clearly non-volitive subjects in which verbs do take
actor voice morphology, as in (12) and (13), in which the subjects are both ex-
periencers.
(10) Hasan entar dha' Jakarta.
Hasan go to Jakarta
‘Hasan went to Jakarta.’
(11) Moy-tamoy-ya dhateng jam lema'.
RED-guest-DEF come hour five
‘The guests come at five o’clock.’
(12) Rina ng-esto-we Bambang.
Rina AV-love-E Bambang
‘Rina loves Bambang.’
(13) Mored rowa ng-yaken-ne jawab-ba.
student that AV-sure-E answer-DEF^
‘That student is sure about the answer.’
These data indicate that some notion of transitivity is a least associated with the
ng- prefix.^3 The nature of the transitivity in (12) and (13) is discussed below in
section 1.3.
1.1.1 Actor voice with intransitive roots
Actor voice morphology is not limited to the domain of transitive clauses, how-
ever. There is a class of intransitive verbs that (largely) obligatorily take actor
voice marking. Verbs in this class, referred to as controlled dynamic intransitive
verbs in Chapter 6 section 4.1, prototypically take an agentive subject. A partial
list includes
(^3) Chung (1976) glosses the Indonesian actor voice prefix as 'TRANS', indicating that
transitivity played a role or was the sole meaning of meng-.