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1. Introduction1 Focus Or Ergativity? I df'1C:,dq v ~ ir '1 SIL LIBRAR"Y '.t DAVAO FOCUS OR ERGATIVITY? PRONOUN SETS IN UMA Michael Martens 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Mention Philippine languages, and linguists immediately think of focus. All Philippine languages have focus grammar, and it affects much of their morphology and syntax. Noun phrases in Philippine languages have in- or out-of-focus mark­ ers, also called topic or non-topic markers. Verbs typically have affixes to indicate the case role of the focused noun phrase. Philippine languages all have multiple sets of pronouns that work within this focus system. Synchronic linguists seldom talk about Philippine languages in terms of ergative vs. accusative. An accusative language, like English, marks the subject of all clauses the same, whether transitive or intransitive (nominative case), but marks the object of a transitive verb differently (accusative case), for instance: 'He walks' and 'He hit him', where both subjects are 'he' but the object is 'him'. An ergative language, on the other hand, marks the subject of an intran­ sitive verb and the object of a transitive verb the same (called absolutive case), and the subject of a transitive verb is marked differently (ergative case). Were English ergative, we would say 'HIM walks' and 'He hit HIM' - or perhaps 'He walks' and 'He hit by-him', minus the passive connotation such a construction has in real English. 2 At first this doesn't seem to have too much bearing on Philippine languages. Linguists have trouble deciding just what a 'subject' is in the first place in these languages (see Schachter 1976). Is it the actor? the topic? or do Philippine languages even have subjects? The purpose of this paper is to describe how in Uma, an Austronesian language of Sulawesi, the pronoun sets can be interpreted as an ergative system. From there, I also want to show that pronoun sets in Philippine languages also possess an obscure but potential ergative system. 2. PRONOUN SETS One key area involved in the grammar of focus is pronoun sets. Philippine lan­ guages all have more than one set of pronouns. A typical Philippine language has: (a) a set of topic pronouns. These are usually short enclitic forms. They are used when the pronoun is the topic of the clause (in focus). Papers in western Austronesian linguistics No.4, 263-277. Pacific Linguistics, A-79, 1988. © Michael Martens 263 264 MICHAEL MARTENS (b) a set of non-topic actor pronouns that also function as possessive pronouns on noun phrases. On verbs, these pronouns mark the actor of the verb when the verb is not actor-focus. (c) a set of independent, free-standing pronouns, used for emphasis, objects of prepositions, etc. These are usually longer forms of the topic pronouns. (d) perhaps a set of oblique pronouns, a type of 'garbage basket' set that marks non-topics that are also non-actors. 2.1 Western Bukidnon Manobo I have picked Western Bukidnon Manobo (WBM), a language of Mindanao, to illus­ trate what the pronouns of a 'typical' Philippine language are like. One of my reasons for choosing WBM is that it is a relatively unknown minor language of the Philippines, yet one which is well researched. Another reason for my choice is that WBM is geographically close to Sulawesi, though this does not necessar­ ily imply that Uma is linguistically any closer to WBM than it is to any other Philippine language. If one combines the full topic forms and the emphatic forms, WBM has four sets of pronouns. (All examples are from Elkins 1970, 1971, 1974.) WBM pronoun sets I. TOPIC 2 . NON-TOP IC 3. KI-(OBLIQUE) 4. EMPHATIC sg. pI. sg. pI. sg. pI. sg. pI. 1 a key ku dey ked i i/ked i ley kenami 5 i I ak sikami 2 ka kew nu niyu kenikew keniyu sikew sikiyu 3 0 dan din dan kandin kandan sikandin sikandan 1+2 ki kiyu ta tew kenita keni tew sikita sikitew The topic pronouns are clitics; they mark the topic of a clause, that is, the actor in actor-focus, object in object-focus, etc. The non-topic pronouns mark the actor of any clause that is not actor-focus. The oblique pronouns, from what Elkins' examples show, mark non-topic clause participants such as object or indirect object of an actor-focus clause. 3 The emphatic pronouns are just that, pronouns used in emphatic position; they are longer forms of the topic pronouns. From now on let us concentrate on the first two pronoun sets. Elkins describes four focus categories in WBM: subject focus, which for the purpose of consist­ ency we will here call actor focus (AF); direction-focus (DF), instrument-focus (IF), and object-focus (OF). Notice how the first two pronoun sets are used in these four focus types. (Pronouns are in ALL CAPS and marked TOPic or Non-Topic in gloss.) For simplicity, verbal morphemes not pertinent to the discussion have not been glossed. (1) AF: miD-pen-pe-zigu l A bathe,AF I(TOP) I bathe myself. (2) DF: miD-uwit-an KIYU ZIN en te gasa brought, DF I+YOU(TOP) he (NT) campI NT gift He brought us a gift. PRONOUN SETS IN UMA 265 (3) IF: i -D-pes i yu KEY Z I N pezem d i ye I te t i yengg i yan take.walk,IF we (TOP) he (NT) opt there NT,com market He would like to take us for a walk now in the market. l (4) OF: N-e- ehe ' -0 KEY ZIN en ma'an gevi I i diya ' te Pangi saw, OF us (TOP) he (NT) compl repet yesterday there NT,com Pangi He saw us again yesterday at Pangi . (The pronoun zin in examples (2), (3), and (4) is the 3s NT form din that has undergone a phonemic change.) Note that the three non-actor-focus clause types are very similar to each other. The topic, whether it be the D, I, or 0, appears as a topic pronoun (Set 1), and the actor appears as a non-topic pro­ noun (Set 2). The AF clause (example (1)), however, is different; it has only a Set 1 pronoun because it is intransitive. As a matter of fact, almost all of the AF clauses in Elkins' data are intransitive. Here are some more AF examples. (5) N-eN-kayu KEY ge' ina get.wood,AF we (TOP) while.ago We went for firewood a whil e ago. (6) eD-peke-lul i I A gunta'an must.go-home,AF I(TOP) today I must go home today . (7) ne miD-pena'ug ne mig-kuwa 0 dutun te selu'al so descend,AF and P-got ,AF he (TOP) there NT,com trousers So he climbed down and took from there some trousers. (8) su eD-peki-tawang A KENIKEW because NonP-As-help,AF I(TOP) you (OBLIQUE) because I am requesting you to help me . Examples (5) and (6) are again intransitive and therefore can only be AF. Exam­ ple (7) has two AF verbs, the first is intransitive and the second transitive. But note that the object of the AF transitive verb is translated as non-definite - not 'THE trousers' but 'SOME trousers'. Example (8) contains a transitive AF verb that uses the requestive prefix peki- (Elkins calls it 'associative'), which, according to the rules of WBM grammar, can only be AF.~ Thus it seems from the data that the AF form of the verb in WBM is only used in clauses in which the transitivity has somehow been mitigated, that is, the direct object is indefinite, or the clause is intransitive, or the verb form is a frozen form. In summary, if we set aside AF transitive verbs for the moment as a bit sus­ picious, and if we lump together the three non-actor cases (object, instrument and direction) and informally call them the 'goal' of the verb, then the topic pronouns can be said to mark the SU.BJECT ('actor') of an intransitive verb and the GOAL of a transitive verb. Non-topic pronouns, by definition, mark the ACTOR of a transitiv e verb. To summarise: Topic Pronoun Subject of Intransitive Goal of Transitive Non-topic Pronoun Actor of Transitive 266 MICHAEL MARTENS 2.2 Subject in Philippine languages So far I have mainly used terms like topic, actor and goal and avoided the use, of the term subject, except in the case of intransitive clauses where there is no dispute about what is the subject. I have done this because there is no small debate about just what 'subject' is in Philippine languages. For example, look­ ing at the OF WBM example, (9) N-e-'ehe'-0 KEY ZIN saw,OF us (TOP) he (NT) He saw us ... /We were seen by him ... some linguists assert that in such non-actor-focus clauses the TOPIC is the subject: 'WE were seen by him'. This view treats the focus system as a kind of voice system. In other words, actor-focus is active voice since the actor is the subject, but any other kind of focus is a kind of passive voice, since some other nominal in the clause has displaced the actor as subject. The original subject, the actor, has now become a chomeur, to use a convenient Relational Grammar term; it has been kicked out of its subject position, like the 'by him' of the English translation above. s Other linguists disagree with this interpretation. 'Passive' in our Indo­ European tradition connotes an unusual or marked construction; but in Philippine languages the non-actor focus constructions are the more natural constructions, and as Bloomfield noted, the actor-focus construction is the one that is avoided if possible.
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