The development of undergoer voice construction in Javanese

Abstract

AbstractThis article aims to investigate the development of undergoer voice construction in Javanese from 10th century to 21st century. This research discusses the development of undergoer voice constructions by focusing on affix markers and the presence of agent arguments, especially agents in the form of first-person personal pronouns. The method employed in this research is a qualitative approach by utilizing corpus linguistic methods for data collection. The data sources used are taken from literary texts written include prose and poetry from the 10th to the 21st century. There are 12 texts that are used as data sources in this research. The literary works vary both temporally and regionally. The results claim that Javanese does not have completely the same type of construction as Filipino has the same type as Indonesian in respect to the presence of proclitic in the undergoer voice construction. The findings indicate that agents in the form of first and second-person personal pronouns are crucial in the study of undergoer voice construction in Austronesian languages as they determine the development of undergoer voice constructions. This study provides opportunities for similar research with data sources other than literary works to further strengthen conclusions regarding the disappearance of intransitive undergoer constructions in the Javanese language.

Keywords

• Undergoer voice
• Javanese
• first personal pronoun
• diachronic
• Austronesia
• Jeroen van de Weijer, College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, China