Corpus linguistic and experimental studies on the meaning-preserving hypothesis in Indonesian voice alternations

Abstract One essential feature of voice alternation is that active and passive clauses centred around a given verb express the same meaning: “meaning-preserving” hypothesis. effect different linking grammatical relations semantic roles, which affects identity subject. This paper investigates meaning-preserving hypothesis in Indonesian from quantitative usage-based perspective by combining corpus-based data with sentence-production experiment data. It analysed caused forward/backward motion verbs distribution their (non-)metaphoric senses passive. The findings demonstrate frequency effects sense-sensitivity alternation, such type strongly associated certain senses. finding provides initial support for previous study on an Austronesian language, predicting verb’s properties may condition statistical bias towards particular voice. Some convergence between experimental corpus indicates participants some representation strong association form sense predominantly expressed form, highlighting notion item-specific representations linguistic knowledge as found construction grammar.