Cross-clausal null anaphora 433
Null subjects and objects of transitive actor voice verbs can also occur.
(75) Lo' bisa keya. Keng bisa mangguk tape lo' bisa
not able too only able AV.pull toward but not able
amolong , lo' bisa metthek ___.
AV.collect not able AV.pick
‘She failed too. She could lower them, but she wasn’t able to grab them,
she wasn’t able to pick them.’
The sentences in (75) describes a scene in which a woman attempts to pick
some flowers but is unsuccessful. In the second sentence, in each case both the
subject and the object of the actor voice verbs mangguk ‘pull toward’, amolong
‘collect’, and metthek ‘pick’ are null, the subject referring to the woman and the
object the flowers. Null objects do not occur in embedded clauses, however.
Finally, in (76) there are two consecutive intransitive clauses with null
subjects; however, in this case each has a distinct referent.
(76) Mate pas mennang, ya tanto-na rato bunga.
dead then win yes certain-DEF king happy
‘He died, Radin Sagara won and, of course, the king was happy.’
The discourse context surrounding (76) is a battle between a Chinese king wag-
ing war on the Giling Tosang kingdom and the legendary Radin Sagara. The
null subject of mate ‘die’ refers to the Chinese king, but the null subject of
mennang ‘win’ refers to Radin Sagara. Thus, with sufficient context the subjects
of contiguous intransitive clauses can be null even then they have different refe-
rents.
4. Cross-clausal null anaphora
As described in Chapter 11 there are instances of obligatory coreference be-
tween an NP in the matrix clause and a null anaphor in a dependent clause.
These include control structures and the proleptic object structure. In the case of
control into a complement clause, either the subject or the actor of the embed-
ded clause is null, its reference determined by a matrix argument.
(77) Ina ban Siti nolak ___ magi perman-na dha' embug-ga.
Ina and Siti AV.refuse AV.give candy-DEF to eld.sister-DEF
‘Ina and Siti refused to give their candy to their older sister.’