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On the distinction between arguments and adjuncts in Balinese: the case of locatives

The paper will discuss the distinction between arguments and adjuncts in Balinese,

focussing on the realisation of locatives. Locatives are of great interest because of the

indeterminacy of their syntactic status. They can be either oblique arguments or adjuncts, orin certain cases having an intermediate status between arguments and adjuncts. They also

often marked in the same way. The analysis will be based on corpus data taken from on-line

Balinese newspaper. Patterns will be identified, examined and further tested with native

speakers judgment for degrees of acceptability to sort out certain properties. I propose an

argument-index analysis, an extension of the idea of core-index analysis discussed in Arka

(2005) as a means to distinguish adjuncts from arguments. The analysis makes use of a

battery of morphosyntactic and morphosemantic tests. The morphosyntactic tests include

general and language-specific items such as subcategorisation, obligatoriness, categorical

expressions and verbal-voice marking. The morphosemantic tests include specific semanticmarking attributed to properties such as specific vs. general and human/animate vs. non-

animate as well as locative nominalisation. For example, preposition sig in Balinese at, to

typically requires a specific locative/goal, preferably with human association. However, it is

attested with a non-human locative, provided that it is understood as a specific spatial point

belonging to a particular person as in (1a). Acceptability would be degraded if such

interpretation is difficult to get as in (1b).

(1) a. makejang apang teka ja sig/ka ruang kerja dwkn

all so.that come PART to room work sef.3POSS.. all (to) come to his own office

b. Ia teka ka/?*sig pempatan-n

3 come to intersection-DEF

s/he came to the intersection.

Morphosyntactic tests show that specific/human locatives are treated more as argument

obliques than as adjuncts. In the following example, the specific location signifying the place

to sit on e.g. damparbench is part of the meaning oftegaksit (2a). It should be analysed

as an argument because it can alternate with subject as seen in the applicative verb (2b).

The locative nominalisation with -an (2c) selects this specific location as the reference, not

the general space (which corresponds to an adjunct).

(2) a. Ia negak di dampar-e / di paon-ne

3 AV.sit LOC bench-DEF LOC kitchen-3POSS

He sat on the bench /in his kitchen.

b. Dampar-e/paon-ne tegak-in=a

bench-DEF/kitchen-3POSS UV.sit-APPL=3

He sat on the bench/his kitchen

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c. Tegak-an-ne dampar-e / * paon-ne

sit-LOC.NOMLZ-DEF bench-DEF kitchen-3POSS

the seat is the bench

*the seat is his kitchen.

Oblique-core argument alternations of the type shown in (2a-b) include a change in

affectedness associated with the locative. Other meanings noted in literature include

aspects (completed vs. non-completed), animacy, and (temporary/permanent) transfer of

ownership, i.e., trivalent give-like verbs of the type found in Kimaragang (Kroeger 2005:

420-421) and other languages (Kittil 2007, 2008; Peterson 2007, and the references

therein). Further relevant examples will be given from Balinese.

The full paper will also further discuss the application of the argument-index analysis. It will

be demonstrated that that the argument-index evidence shows that the distinction ofargument and adjunct is a matter of degree. The implication of such evidence for any

syntactic theory that posits discrete classes of relations will be also discussed.

References

Arka, I Wayan. 2005. The core-oblique distinction and core index in some Austronesian

languages of Indonesia Paper read at Paper presented at International ALT VI

(Association of Linguistic Typology conference, Padang Indonesia, July 2005.

Kittil, Seppo. 2007. On the encoding of transitivity-related features on the indirect object.

Functions of Language 14 (1):149164.. 2008. Differential Object Marking revisited: Concerning the animacy effects on the

encoding of Goals. Linguistic Typology. Linguistic Typology12 (2):245-268.

Kroeger, Paul. 2005. Kimaragang. In The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar,

edited by K. A. Adelaar and N. P. Himmelmann, 397-428. London: Routledge.

Peterson, David A. 2007.Applicative constructions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.