1 Introduction

It is by now generally agreed upon that objects can raise to a derived object position for licensing or discourse effects (Holmberg 1986; Mahajan 1990; Johnson 1991; Koopman & Sportiche 1991; Diesing 1992; Chomsky 1993; Bobaljik 1995; Koizumi 1995; Sportiche 1998; Travis 2001; a.o.). There is also now a growing body of work arguing for a derived applicative position to which a non-core argument may raise (Baker & Collins 2006; Georgala et al. 2018; Georgala 2012; Deal 2013; Massam 2015). The non-core argument in question first merges in a thematic position and then undergoes movement to the specifier of a linker or applicative head which licenses the argument but assigns no additional thematic role. These raising applicatives—a term borrowed from Georgala (2012)—have been employed to account for the behaviour of goals in double object constructions (Baker & Collins 2006; Georgala et al. 2008; Georgala 2012), instruments in high applicative constructions and causees in causatives of transitives (Massam 2015). Deal (2013) makes use of a raising applicative to account for external possession in Nez Perce: the external possessor is base generated in a thematic position internal to the possessum DP but raises to an athematic position, where it is assigned accusative Case and controls object agreement on the verb.

In this paper, I present novel data on external possession in Tagalog, which provide support for (i) an applicative analysis of external possession and (ii) a raising applicative approach to applicative morphology in the language in general. As in other Philippine-type languages, Tagalog voice morphology tracks what is called the pivot (Schachter 1976; Dixon 1979; 1994; Foley & van Valin 1984; Klaiman 1991; Kroeger 1991; Nolasco 2005; a.o.), which is marked with nominative Case and receives a definite/specific interpretation. When the pivot is a theme or patient, the verb generally appears in the Patient Voice (1a). When the pivot is a source, goal or location, the verb appears in the Locative Voice (1b).

The Locative Voice affix -an has been analysed as a thematic low applicative marker in Tagalog (Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004). However, the Locative Voice can also be used to express external possession. (2a) shows a simple transitive clause with a DP-internally possessed theme, where the internal possessor has genitive Case and modifies the nominative theme, which conditions Patient Voice on the verb. In the external possession variant in (2b), the external possessor is expressed as the nominative pivot and triggers Locative Voice on the verb; the possessum surfaces with genitive Case.

This paper argues that external possession in Tagalog is a case of possessor raising rather than control as it does not introduce a new thematic role and is not limited to animate or affected arguments. External possession is, however, restricted to transitive verbal predicates with particular event properties, suggesting that the possessor first merges in the syntax as a thematic low applicative rather than a DP-internal possessor. I propose that the thematic low applicative cannot license the possessor; the possessor must therefore raise to an athematic applicative position for licensing and nominative pivot marking by Voice. This athematic applicative head is spelled out as the Locative Voice affix in Tagalog. My proposal therefore takes Locative Voice morphology not to be a thematic applicative but a raising applicative, which triggers movement of an argument for licensing purposes but does not assign it a new thematic role (Georgala et al. 2008, Georgala 2012).

The raising applicative approach developed for external possessors can be extended to all Locative Voice constructions in Tagalog. Pivots associated with Locative Voice encompass a wide range of thematic relations but nonetheless exhibit identical syntactic behaviour. A raising applicative analysis of Locative Voice provides a natural account of this: arguments that are introduced in a variety of thematic positions may raise to the same applicative position, marked by Locative Voice. A raising applicative analysis of Circumstantial Voice, previously taken to be a thematic high applicative in the literature (Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004; 2012; Chang 2015), has the same advantage. I present evidence from instrumental applicatives and causatives of transitives suggesting that Circumstantial Voice is also of the raising applicative type. Locative Voice and Circumstantial Voice are shown to be two contextual spell-outs of the same raising applicative head and thus exist in complementary distribution in Tagalog.

Applied arguments, despite also participating in the voice system of the language, are syntactically distinct from core arguments in a crucial way. Unlike agents and themes, applied arguments are generally never assigned genitive Case (3a); they must be marked as the nominative pivot (3b) (Bell 1976; 1983; Pearson 2001; Travis 2001; Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004; 2012).

In the approach advanced in this paper, agents and themes are licensed and assigned Case in-situ. Applied arguments, on the other hand, are not licensed in their thematic position and must move to the raising applicative position for licensing and to be made accessible to Voice for nominative Case assignment. My proposal thus accounts for the obligatory promotion of applied arguments to pivot, which must be explained in any approach to voice morphology in Tagalog and other Philippine-type languages.

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 lays out my basic assumptions about the interaction of nominal licensing and Case assignment in the Tagalog voice system. The two basic voice types, Agent Voice and Patient Voice, arise when the external argument-introducing head Voice assigns nominative pivot marking to the agent and to the theme, respectively. In Section 3, I introduce novel data on external possession in Tagalog, showing that external possessors are restricted to themes of transitive change of state predicates but need not be affected. In Section 4, I make the case that external possession in Tagalog involves movement of the possessor from a thematic low applicative to an athematic raising applicative position, spelled out by Locative Voice. The possessor is then assigned nominative Case by Voice. I show that the raising applicative analysis can easily be extended to provide a unified analysis of thematically distinct Locative Voice pivots. Section 5 provides evidence for Circumstantial Voice as a raising applicative in instrumental and causative constructions. Locative Voice and Circumstantial Voice are shown to be two morphological reflexes of the same raising applicative head. Section 6 concludes.

2 Tagalog voice morphology

Tagalog is standardly described as having four main voice distinctions, as shown in (4). As in other languages with Philippine-type voice alternations, Tagalog voice morphology tracks what is often referred to as the pivot argument (Dixon 1979; 1994; Schachter 1976; Foley & van Valin 1984; Klaiman 1991; Kroeger 1991; Nolasco 2005; a.o.), which is always marked with ang or nominative Case and interpreted as definite/specific. As a result, each clause in (4) is semantically transitive but each receives a different voice marker. Agent Voice marking, for example, appears on the verb when the pivot is the agent of the clause (4a), while the Patient Voice construction is used when the pivot is a theme or patient (4b). The Locative Voice suffix -an appears with location, source or goal pivots (4c). In the Circumstantial Voice construction, the pivot may express a range of thematic roles, including beneficiary and instrument (4d). Non-pivot core arguments of the verb are marked with ng (pronounced /naŋ/) or genitive Case and are usually interpreted as non-specific. Non-core arguments receive sa or oblique Case marking and may co-occur with an overt preposition.

Aldridge (2004; 2012) reduces the four-way descriptive voice system in Tagalog to two basic clause types: Agent Voice reflects an antipassive clause and Patient Voice reflects a transitive clause, while the Locative and Circumstantial Voice affixes spell out low and high applicative heads, respectively, built on a transitive (Patient Voice) clause.¹ I show that while Aldridge’s characterisation is essentially correct, Agent Voice and Patient Voice are not two distinct lexical Voice heads (antipassive and transitive, respectively) but variants of the same active Voice head, whose spell-out depends on how many bundles of φ-features it bears.

I assume that external arguments are introduced by the functional head Voice (Kratzer 1996) which merges above a verb υ, which consists of a verb-categorising head that merges with a lexical root and takes the theme as its complement (Marantz 1997); it is standardly assumed within Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993) that lexical roots are acategorial and must adjoin to a categorising head in order to receive a syntactic category (Harley & Noyer 1999; Harley 2014). The υ head also introduces an event variable and determines the kind of eventuality denoted by the resulting predicate (Harley 1995). This system therefore employs two functional heads, Voice and υ, in addition to the lexical root (Marantz 1997; McGinnis 2001; Cuervo 2003; Pylkkänen 2008; Harley 2013; 2017), rather than a simple functional little υ and lexical V distinction (Hale & Keyser 1993; Chomsky 1995). Non-core arguments are introduced by applicative heads Appl merged below Voice (McGinnis 2001; Cuervo 2003; Pylkkänen 2008).

I assume that nominals bear uninterpretable φ-features that must be checked in the syntax via φ-agreement with a nominal licensing head, one of Voice, Appl and υ (Chomsky 2000; 2001). Nominal licensing must occur in a local relation, either a specifier-head or head-complement relation, and the uninterpretable φ-features on the nominal licenser are valued as a consequence of licensing. Nominals also bear an abstract Case feature that must be valued by a Case-assigning head. However, nominal licensing is a prerequisite for Case assignment. Thus Case assignment either co-occurs with licensing in the same agreement operation, or Case is assigned to a nominal that has already been licensed by another head. Voice and υ may optionally assign inherent genitive Case to the nominals they license (Aldridge 2004; 2012), but Appl does not assign Case; I return to Appl later in this section. Voice additionally assigns structural nominative Case (pivot marking) to the highest nominal that has been licensed but has not yet been assigned Case. Voice can thus assign nominative to either its external argument or the highest Case-less DP in its c-command domain. Prepositions represent another kind of nominal licenser and assign oblique Case.

In sum, all nominals must undergo both nominal licensing and Case assignment. The basic system is illustrated in (5) and (6). In (5), υ licenses its DP complement via φ-agreement (thereby valuing the uninterpretable φ-features on υ) and assigns it inherent genitive Case. Voice likewise licenses its DP specifier; because its specifier is the highest Case-less DP in the derivation, Voice also assigns it structural nominative Case, indicated by the dashed line. The agent therefore ends up as the pivot of the clause.

In (6), υ licenses its complement via φ-agreement but does not assign it Case. This makes the theme is highest Case-less argument in the clause; Voice therefore assigns the theme nominative Case, marking it as pivot. I assume that Voice has its φ-features valued as a consequence of its interaction with the theme. Voice then licenses its specifier and assigns it inherent genitive Case, gaining a second set of φ-features.

Voice has the dual role of licensing and assigning Case to an external argument and determining the nominative pivot of the clause. A consequence of this is that Voice (and only Voice) can bear the φ-feature bundles of two different arguments. In (6), where the internal argument is pivot, Voice has the φ-features of both the internal and external arguments.²

Pivots are privileged arguments in their syntax and interpretation. Most clauses have exactly one pivot, which is interpreted as definite/specific. Pivots can also undergo A’-extraction, while non-pivot arguments generally cannot (Bell 1976; Keenan & Comrie 1977; Kroeger 1991; Paul 2000; 2002; Aldridge 2004; 2016; Rackowski & Richards 2005). This has prompted some scholars to liken the behaviour of the pivot in Philippine languages to object shift in Germanic (Richards 2000; Rackowski 2002; Rackowski & Richards 2005; Sabbagh 2016), where the pivot obligatorily moves to the outer edge of VoiceP and becomes the highest argument visible to C for overt or covert extraction. Common to both the object shift approach and the proposal sketched here is that it is essentially Voice which determines which argument is the pivot (see also Aldridge 2004; 2012; Jeoung 2018). In my approach, the pivot is identified by virtue of having undergone nominative Case assignment by Voice. The ability to determine the pivot may be a lexical property of Voice or a property derived from agreement between Voice (the highest head in the thematic domain) and finite T (see Legate 2005). Regardless of where the features of pivothood originate, however, I assume that the pivot, once identified by nominative Case assignment by Voice, is then visible to C/T for additional syntactic operations, such as focus or wh-extraction. I remain agnostic as to whether the pivot undergoes intermediate movements of the object shift type.³

The major voice forms in Tagalog may now be derived. The four voices for sulat ‘write’ are given in their perfective and infinitive forms in (7). The infix <in> marks the perfective across all voices except the Agent Voice. Agent Voice forms surface with an allomorph of the prefix pag-, which is conditioned by aspect.⁴

Following Rackowski (2002), I propose that pag- and its allomorphs spell out the Voice head, subject to morphosyntactic conditioning by an aspectual projection Asp above VoiceP.⁵ The infix <in> spells out Asp in the perfective, under certain conditions to be made explicit. The Locative Voice suffix -an and Circumstantial Voice prefix i- are associated with Appl (Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004; 2012; Chang 2015).

A syntactic derivation for the Agent Voice construction in (8) is sketched in (9). The internal argument is licensed and assigned genitive Case by υ. Voice licenses the external argument and assigns it nominative Case, marking it as the pivot of the clause. The derivation proceeds with Voice and υ bearing one bundle of valued φ-features each.

The derivation for the corresponding Patient Voice construction in (10) is given in (11). Here υ licenses the theme but does not assign it genitive Case. The theme is therefore assigned structural nominative Case by Voice, which marks it as the pivot of the clause. Voice then licenses and assigns genitive Case to its specifier, ending up with two bundles of valued φ-features.

In the proposed approach, the source of the morphological alternation between Agent Voice and Patient Voice constructions is the number of φ-feature bundles borne by the Voice head. In the Agent Voice, the external argument is the only nominal that Voice agrees with, giving the appearance of being antipassive (Aldridge 2004; 2012). In Patient Voice constructions, by contrast, Voice also undergoes φ-agreement with a nominal in its c-command domain, thereby ending up with two bundles of φ-features; this will be shown to be true of the other non-Agent Voices as well. Recall from (7) that the infix <in> marks perfective aspect across all voices except the Agent Voice, while the Agent Voice forms involve an allomorph of the prefix pag- (nag- in the perfective, mag- in the infinitive). The distribution of these Voice and aspect markers can be understood as simple cases of contextual allomorphy. The perfective aspectual head is spelled out as <in> in the local context of Voice with two valued φ-feature bundles, as in the Patient Voice (12a). Perfective Asp is spelled out as zero elsewhere, as in the Agent Voice (12b).

In the perfective, Voice is realised as nag- when it has one bundle of φ-features, as in the Agent Voice (13a), and is phonologically zero when it has two, as in Patient Voice (13b).⁶

In Deal (2010), the context of insertion for the ergative case marker in Nez Perce similarly references two φ-feature bundles.

The other two major voice types, the Locative Voice and Circumstantial Voice, involve essentially the same ingredients as Patient Voice, but with the addition of Appl, which licenses its specifier but does not bear a Case feature. The applied argument cannot receive Case from Appl and must therefore be assigned structural nominative Case by Voice instead. This derives the fact that applied arguments are always nominative in Tagalog.

The Circumstantial Voice prefix i- is typically associated with benefactive and instrument pivots and can combine with unergative predicates, as shown in (14). Based on diagnostics from Pylkkänen (2008), these properties indicate that the Circumstantial Voice involves a high applicative (Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004).

The derivation for (15), based on a high applicative analysis of Circumstantial Voice, is given in (16). υ licenses the theme and assigns it genitive Case. While Appl licenses the applied argument in its specifier, it has no Case to assign. Voice therefore assigns structural nominative Case to the applied argument, which becomes the pivot of the clause. Voice then licenses and assigns genitive Case to its specifier, ending up with two bundles of φ-features.

In Section 5, I argue that Circumstantial Voice is better analysed as a raising applicative construction, where the applied argument moves to the Appl head shown in (16) from a lower position. Common to both the high applicative and raising applicative approaches, however, is that Voice assigns nominative Case to the applied argument in an ECM-like configuration, marking it as the pivot. Voice bears two valued φ-feature bundles through agreement with two nominals, which ensures insertion of the correct Vocabulary Items, given in (12a) and (13b) for the perfective.

The Locative Voice suffix -an has several uses; representative examples are given in (17). The Locative Voice pivot in (17a) denotes a location, much like a prepositional phrase. Locative Voice is also frequently used to indicate transfer of possession in double object constructions, in which the recipient is the pivot (17b). A third use of Locative Voice is to convey a benefactive pivot, which also implies (although does not entail) transfer of possession (17c).

Locative Voice has been analysed as a thematic low applicative construction (Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004). However, it has been pointed out that intransitive predicates are compatible with Locative Voice (Chang 2015; Kaufman 2017); this is unexpected if the Locative Voice suffix spells out a low applicative head (Pylkkänen 2008). I leave a full analysis of Locative Voice constructions to Section 4, where I show that a raising applicative analysis of Locative Voice is able to capture this behaviour. It is nonetheless sufficient here to suggest that in the Locative Voice constructions, like its Patient Voice and Circumstantial Voice counterparts, the Voice head promotes to pivot an argument in its c-command domain and bears two valued φ-feature bundles, one from its specifier and one from the pivot.

In this section, I showed that the Tagalog voice system can be understood as the interaction between the case assignment properties of external argument-introducing heads and φ-agreement. In particular, Voice marks as nominative pivot the highest licensed but not yet Case-assigned argument: this can be the agent, theme or an applied argument. The rest of the paper is devoted to understanding the behaviour of applied arguments in Tagalog.

3 External possession

This section provides the empirical basis for Section 4, where I argue for an applicative analysis of external possession in Tagalog. After providing a brief description of internal possession (Section 3.1), I introduce the basic syntactic and discourse properties of external possession in Tagalog (Section 3.2). In Section 3.3, I present the argument structure restrictions on external possession, showing that it is limited to themes of externally-caused change of state verbs. This theme restriction on external possession is found in closely related Cebuano (Bell 1976; 1983) but is absent in other Austronesian languages, such Malagasy (Keenan 1972; Keenan & Ralalaoherivony 2001), Chamorro (Chung 2008) and Indonesian (Davies 2008; Jeoung 2018). The data presented in this section comes from elicitation work with four native speaker consultants.

4 Raising applicative analysis

5 High and low raising applicative

While I adopt the term raising applicative from Georgala (2012), I make one significant modification to the original raising applicative proposals (Georgala et al. 2008; Georgala 2012). The original proposal advocates for a single applicative projection above υP that could either (i) both syntactically license an argument and assign it a thematic role or (ii) syntactically license an argument that already has a thematic role. Applying Pylkkänen’s (2008) dichotomy, Georgala and colleagues suggest that “high” applied arguments are those which are thematically introduced and licensed by the applicative head, while “low” applied arguments are generated in a thematic position below the verb and raise to the applicative position in order to be licensed by it. Thus low applicatives involve raising but high applicatives do not.

The spirit of the raising applicative proposal is to treat the thematic role assignment function of low applicatives as independent of their syntactic licensing function. I propose to take this approach one step further by arguing that high applicatives also involve raising. That is, just like low applied arguments (and complements of non-licensing prepositions), high applied arguments are also associated with two positions: a lower position for thematic role assignment and a higher position for syntactic licensing. This conclusion is supported by Massam (2015), who argues that instrumental applicatives in Niuean must move to a higher position for licensing. I furthermore demonstrate that this higher raising applicative position is in fact the same for both low and and high applicatives in Tagalog. Deal (2013) makes a very similar suggestion for external possession and benefactive constructions in Nez Perce, which exhibit the same applicative marker on the verb. In this section, I argue that Circumstantial Voice, which has previously been diagnosed as a high applicative (Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004; 2012; Chang 2015), is in fact also a raising applicative in Tagalog. Two arguments are presented, one from instruments (Section 5.1) and another from causatives of transitives (Section 5.2).

6 Conclusion

I have argued in this paper that the Tagalog Locative Voice and Circumstantial Voice constructions are best understood as applicative constructions involving an athematic raising applicative. External possessors and other nominals that remain unlicensed in their thematic position move to the specifier of the raising applicative in order to be licensed and eligible for nominative Case assignment by Voice. This proposal ties together several language-specific and cross-linguistic insights. It provides a unified analysis of the thematic DPs that can be encoded as Locative Voice and Circumstantial Voice pivots. The single, high position for the raising applicative also offers an explanation for why Locative Voice and Circumstantial Voice morphology are in complementary distribution but both voice types can combine with unergative predicates.

My approach also provides further support for a derived applicative position (Baker & Collins 2006; Georgala et al. 2018; Georgala 2012; Deal 2013; Massam 2015), which captures the generalisation that in languages with overt applicative morphology, the applied argument behaves as the surface direct object of the complex verb in receiving structural Case, controlling object agreement, etc. (Marantz 1984; Baker 1988). This generalisation in turn echoes the insight from Relational Grammar that non-core arguments are subject to advancement rules that promote indirect objects (called 3s) and oblique arguments to the status of objects (called 2s); these derived objects may undergo further promotion to subjects (called 1s) (Johnson 1974; Kimenyi 1976; Perlmutter & Postal 1977; a.o.). Thus in Kinyarwanda, for example, high applicatives undergo 3 to 2 advancement, which feeds 2 to 1 advancement (Kimenyi 1976). Tagalog and other languages with Philippine-type voice systems exhibit another kind of advancement rule: non-core arguments must be promoted to the pivot subject and thus undergo advancement from 3 directly to 1 (Bell 1976; 1983). Importantly, advancement rules are subject to the 1-Advancement Exclusiveness Law, which states that only one argument can advance to 1 during the derivation of a clause (Perlmutter & Postal 1984). In other words, applied arguments that are promoted to 1 must remain 1s and cannot later be demoted via the application of, for example, a passive or antipassive rule. In Tagalog, the 1-Advancement Exclusiveness Law is seen in the fact that applied arguments must be nominative 1s and cannot surface with genitive Case as a demoted antipassive object (called chômeurs). The direct promotion of applied arguments to 1 and the Advancement Exclusiveness Law are both captured in the current proposal: applied arguments are not eligible to receive inherent genitive Case and must instead be assigned nominative Case by Voice, the only structural Case assigner in the language.

A final question that arises concerns how the properties of applicatives in languages without overt applicative marking on the verb, such as English and German, compare to those in languages with such overt marking. Applied arguments in German, for example, are generally marked dative and cannot undergo at least some types of passivisation (Haider 1985; a.o.), suggesting that they do not advance to object or subject status in the language. The potential positive correlation between overt applicative morphology and argument advancement is an intriguing possibility; this is left for future research.

Abbreviations

<> = infix, 1SG = 1st person singular pronoun, 3SG = 3rd person singular pronoun, 3SUBJ = 3rd person subject agreement, APPL = applicative, AV = Agent Voice, CAUS = causative, CV = Circumstantial Voice, ERG = ergative, FOC = focus marker, GEN = genitive, IMPF = imperfective, INSTR = instrumental applicative, LNK = linker, LV = Locative Voice, NOM = nominative, NONVOL = Non-volitional Voice, OBJ = objective, OBL = oblique, PAG = pag, PAST = past tense, PFV = perfective, PN = proper noun, PRES = present tense.

Funding Information

This research was supported in part by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship #752-2016-0096.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.