Control 351
As illustrated in (72), coba' ‘try’ also allows a non-corferential actor in the
complement.
(72) Ali nyoba' Bambang ma-becce’ sapedha motor-ra bi’ obing.
Ali AV.try Bambang AV.CS-good motorcycle-DEF with screwdriver
‘Ali tried (to have) Bambang to fix his motorcycle with a screwdriver.’
These structures are reminiscent of control structures in other languages,
though without any obvious non-finiteness or tense restrictions on the comple-
ment clause typically found in other languages. Additionally, while the corefe-
rence requirement is generally (though not exclusively) sensitive to grammatical
functions in other languages such as subject and object, the coreference re-
quirement for these structures in Madurese is largely sensitive to thematic rela-
tions. For example, the embedded argument in control structures in the majority
of languages must be the subject. In Madurese, it is generally the embedded
actor argument that must be coreferential. This is clear in (73), in which the
embedded clause is an object voice structure.
(73) Ali nyoba' sapedha motor-ra e-pa-becce’ bi’ obing.
Ali AV.try motorcycle-DEF OV-CS-good with screwdriver
‘Ali tried to fix his motorcycle with a screwdriver.’
In (73), the embedded subject of the object voice predicate epabecce' ‘fix’ is
sapedha motorra ‘his motorcycle’. The coreferential argument is the non-overt
actor, which is understood to be Ali. Madurese thus differs from many languag-
es of the world but behaves the same as Tagalog (Schachter 1976), where in
many cases it is the actor, not the subject/topic which must be coreferential with
a matrix argument.
The facts are the same for structures in which it is a nonactor matrix ar-
gument which must corefer with an embedded argument. This is illustrated with
the verb lantor ‘allow’ in (74).
(74) Ebu' a-lantor na'-kana' tifi e-tenggu sa.ejjam aggi'.
mother AV-allow RED-child TV OV-watch one.hour later
‘Mother let the children watch TV for one more hour.’
In (74), the embedded subject is tifi. However, the matrix object na'-kana'
‘children’ is coreferential with the unexpressed embedded actor of tenggu
‘watch’. The sentence in (74) is synonymous with the sentence in (70), in which
the complement clause has an actor voice structure.
For many speakers, it is also possible for the matrix clause of subject con-
trol verbs to occur in the object voice. This is illustrated with the verb coba'
‘try’ in (66), and again in (75) with jajal ‘try’.