Diathesis, Grammatical Relations, and Clitics in Ampenan Sasak

Abstract

This dissertation presents a morphosyntactic description of a variety of Sasak referred to as Ampenan Sasak (henceforth AS). AS has been traditionally grouped in previous studies on Sasak as part of Ngeno-ngené dialect. Sasak itself is an under-described Austronesian language spoken on the eastern Indonesian island of Lombok. Utilizing a corpus of conversational data and elicited data, this dissertation examines the structural properties of diathetitcal operations and pronominal clitics in AS in addition to describing major areas of morphology and syntax.

There are two primary objectives in this dissertation. It first aims to describe the diathesis found in AS followed by identifying the grammatical relations (GRs). Findings show that AS has a symmetrical alternation with no morphological marking on verbs, analogous to voice in other Austronesian languages of the region that are termed Agentive Diathesis (AD) and Patientive Diathesis (PD) in this dissertation. AD comprises two subsconstructions namely non-clitic construction and a marked AV construction. These findings are supported by GRs which only target certain argument(s) depending on the construction. Based on seven diagnostic constructions (or argument selectors) that have been used to provide evidence for GRs in other Sasak dialects and related languages, the findings identify different types of GRs, including a pivot, subject, and core argument. Argument selectors, such as structural position, relativization, and raising provide evidence for pivot, while other argument selectors, such as variable binding and control provide evidence for subject. Additionally, coreferential arguments and quantifier float provide evidence for core argumenthood.

The second objective seeks to describe pronominal clitics in AS in terms of their variation, functions, and distribution in the clause based on naturally occurring discourse. The objective also includes locating pronominal clitics in AS within the typology of Western Austronesian languages. The findings suggest that pronominal clitics in AS are best categorized as simple and special clitics which attach to a wide range of hosts. Simple clitics comprise possessive and non-subject/pivot P clitics while special clitics include subjects, which express S and A arguments. In regard to the distribution, special clitics in AS occur in a wider range of positions compared to clitics in related languages of the region. That is, they can occur not only in the second positions but also in different positions in the clause. The latter case has not been observed in previous studies on Sasak.