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IN
VOICE SELECTION IN BALINESE NARRATIVE DISCOURSE
I Wayan Pastika
ISBN : 979-3790-08-3 Published : 2006
Abstrak
I Wayan Pastika
VOICE SELECTION IN BALINESE NARRATIVE DISCOURSE
Voice selection in transitive clauses in Balinese is very strongly associated with the topicality of O. Zero Transitive clauses are used when O is highly topical; Nasal Transitive clauses are chosen when O is not topical. Voice cannot be predicted on the basis of topicality of A: Zero Transitive and Nasal Transitive clauses have topical A arguments. In other words, A is normally topical in transitive constructions.
Grounding per se does not determine voice selection: Zero Transitive clauses are not more likely to occur simply because they advance the story line. Rather, it is the nature of O which is the most important factor in determining voice. The combination of foregrounding with a highly topical O further enhances the probability of selection of Zero Transitive clauses. The reason why foregrounded clauses correlate with Zero Transitive clauses with a highly topical O is that the topical O’s of foregrounded clauses tend to get their topicality in a way which ensures that O will be the most suitable pivot. The criteria of Referential Distance and Topic Persistence are rather crude measures of ‘topicality.’ For example, reflexive O’s are counted as highly topical with respect to RD because not only are they coreferential with A of the reflexive clause they themselves appear in, but A itself is usually highly topical in terms of Referential Distance. Thus, the Referential Distance measurements adopted obscure the fact some Os are ‘topical’ only by virtue of their coreference with a highly topical A. It is therefore not surprising to find that these reflexive O’s do not pattern with more genuinely topical O’s in triggering Zero Transitive. Since reflexives are mostly used in backgrounded clauses rather than foregrounded clauses, the result is that the more genuinely topical O’s form a higher proportion of the topical O’s of foregrounded clauses than they do of topical O’s in all clauses. Thus, it appears that foregrounding enhances the tendency for Zero Transitive to be used when O is topical. To recapitulate, topicality of O is the major determinant of voice selection in Balinese: highly topical O’s tend to occur in Zero Transitive clauses; O’s which are low in topicality tend to occur in Nasal Transitive clauses.