426 Chapter 13 Anaphora
(43) Marlena so Siti rem-kerem-an sorat.
Marlena and Siti RED-send-AN letter
‘Marlena and Siti sent each other letters.’
(44) Bambang ban Ita gu'-teggu'-an tanang-nga.
Bambang and Ita RED-hold-AN hand-DEF
‘Bambang and Ita held hands.’
In each example, a transitive root occurs without voice morphology, pokol ‘hit’,
kerem ‘send’, and teggu' ‘hold’ in (42-44), respectively. The second strategy
makes use of a special preverbal morpheme and the verb again lacks voice mor-
phology, but in this structure there is neither reduplication nor the suffix -an.
(45) Ali bi' Hasan saleng/patang pokol.
Ali and Hasan hit
‘Ali and Hasan hit each other.’
(46) Marlena so Siti saleng/salang/patang kerem sorat.
Marlena and Siti send letter
‘Marlena and Siti sent each other letters.’
(47) Bambang ban Ita saleng/salang/patang/gante teggu' tanang-nga.
Bambang and Ita take hand-DEF
‘Bambang and Ita held hands.’
A number of different morphemes are possible in the preverbal position. The
most frequently used is saleng (and its variant salang). It is most often trans-
lated as ‘each other’, though as shown below it can be used outside of the reci-
procal construction. Patang is less frequently used but has the same basic mean-
ing as saleng. Least frequently used is the verb gante which means ‘follow’ or
‘substitute’. It can be used elsewhere as an adverb with a plural subject that
indicates that the subjects took turns performing the action without any implica-
tion of coreference, as in (55) below.
There are a number of properties that the two different structures have in
common. First, as already noted, the verb obligatory occurs without voice mor-
phology. Second, reciprocal action must be carried out by the necessarily plural
agent. Third, as saleng and the others can be shown to have different functions,
there is no overt reciprocal NP in the structure. The plural agent need not be a
single contiguous constituent. As (48) and (49) show, it is possible to have a
singular subject provided there is a comitative PP in the sentence.