256 Chapter 9 VPs and verbal marking
tive/nonvolitional.^4 Thus, roughly speaking, unergative predicates in Madurese
take actor voice morphology, while unaccusative predicates do not, as has been
argued for Balinese (Arka 2003) and Javanese (Davies 1991).
1.2 Object voice
As stated above, object voice in Madurese indicates that some argument other
than the actor of a transitive predicate has been selected as the subject in the
clause. Object voice is invariantly marked with the prefix e-, as in previous
examples and (19) and (20).
(19) Ale' e-kekke' embi' rowa.
yngr.sibling OV-bite goat that
‘That goat bit Little Brother.’
(20) Maleng rowa e-tangkep polisi.
thief that OV-catch police
‘The police caught the thief.’
In (19) and (20), the agent of the clause embi' rowa ‘that goat’ and polisi ‘the
police’, respectively, occurs in immediate postverbal position and is unmarked.
The agent can optionally be expressed in a PP headed by bi', (mo)so, ban, or
kalaban, as described in Chapter 8 and exemplified in (21) and (22).
(21) Ale' e-kekke' bi' embi' rowa.
yngr.sibling OV-bite by goat that
‘That goat bit Little Brother.’
(22) Maleng rowa e-tangkep so polisi.
thief that OV-catch by police
‘The police caught the thief.’
The preposition adds little to the structure, as there is no identifiable grammati-
cal difference between the pairs (19/21) and (20/22).^5 The preposition becomes
(nearly) obligatory if the agent is separated from the verb. Thus, (23b), which
lacks the preposition is severely degraded (or completely unacceptable for many
speakers), and (24b), with the agent in clause-initial position, is ungrammatical.
(^4) There is a large literature on the imperfect alignment of the unaccusative/unergative
split and semantics.
(^5) This is apparently not the case for the analogues in Balinese (Arka 2003). See
discussion below.