Voice 259
In (29), aba'na dibi' takes its reference from Rika, regardless of whether the
preposition bi' occurs, and, in (30), the possessor aba'na dibi' takes its reference
from the prepositional agent of the clause bi' Marlena. While this does not con-
stitute definitive evidence, it is clear that the type of evidence available in Bali-
nese is not available in Madurese.^8 As is described in section 6, there is a resul-
tive/abilitive structure with the prefix ka- in which a nonagent is subject, but
this is quite distinct from the Balinese passive. However, to the extent that Ma-
durese object voice aligns with the properties of Balinese object voice and not
passive voice, this may provide an additional reason to not treat object voice as
a passive. Thus, unless it serves to help elucidate the structure of a particular
Madurese clause, object voice will be translated as an active rather than a pas-
sive.
1.3 Further manifestations of voice
As illustrated in section 1.1 examples (12) and (13), some verbs that take no
voice morphology in basic usage can be made syntactically transitive and thus
require voice morphology. Additional examples are (31b) and (32b).
(31) a. Hasan entar dha' Bibbi'.
Hasan go to aunt
‘Hasan went to Auntie.’
b. Hasan ng-entar-e Bibbi'.
Hasan AV-go-E aunt
‘Hasan went to (visited) Auntie.’
(32) a. Red-more-da ta' yaken ka jawab-ba.
RED-student-DEF not sure to answer-DEF
‘The students are not sure of the answer.’
b. Red-more-da ta' ng-yaken-e jawab-ba.
RED-student-DEF not AV-sure-E answer-DEF
‘The students are not sure of the answer.’
What distinguishes the a- and b-variants other than actor voice morphology is
the suffix -e on the verbs in the b-variants and the syntactic change to a bare NP
object rather than a PP object, dha' ‘to’ does not occur in (31b) nor ka ‘to’ in
(32b). The status of this suffix is somewhat uncertain. Virtually all theoretical-
(^8) The same type of data from antecedence of reflexives is used as evidence for the status
of the Indonesian di- structure is passive (Arka & Manning 1998; Cole, Hermon &
Yanti 2008).