Abstract

This paper deals with the voice system of Indonesian, and argues that certain of the constructions traditionally analysed as passives, should be given a different treatment, parallel to arguments by Kroeger (1993) for Tagalog. We examine the role of different conceptions of subject and their place in binding. We show that, unlike other Western Austronesian languages, the logical subject – l-subject for short (i.e., the semantically most prominent argument) plays little role in binding: being a logicalsubject alone does not make an argument a binder. Syntactic prominence is crucial, and in particular the data on binding in Indonesian presented here further confirms the notion of syntacticised argument structured (a-str) first proposed in Manning (1994, 1996b) and also adopted in Arka (1998) wherein a central role is given to the notion of a-subject. Like other Austronesian languages, the (surface) grammatical subject (i.e., the SUBJ in the f-structure or gr-subject for short) plays little role, especially in the binding of morphologically complex reflexives. The data from binding is supported by other syntactic tests such as topicalisation with pronominal copy.