Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka, 2025.
“Atayalic subjects and the nature of nominative.”
Manuscript, National University of Singapore.
This paper investigates the nature of subjecthood properties in the Atayalic group of Austronesian languages of Taiwan. Subjects in these languages are associated with a clause-final, high structural position and exhibit topic properties, while also being morphologically reduced as compared to non-nominative case-marked nominals. I therefore propose a model of Austronesian voice alternations, in the wh/case-agreement tradition, where subject promotion involves structure-removal of an argument’s K layer. What is traditionally described as nominative-marking, then, reflects the D layer of a K-less nominal, which then must be in the higher clausal phase. The analysis is motivated further from the limited availability of nominative-marked non-subject nominals, attested in Squliq Atayal and Seediq.