Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka, 2025.
“Atayalic subjects and the nature of nominative.”
Manuscript, CNRS/Nantes Université.
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.