PASSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN ACEHNESE EDUCATIONAL TEXTS: A FUNCTIONAL AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22460/eltin.v14i1.p207-220Abstract
This study investigates passive constructions in Acehnese narrative and descriptive texts presented in Acehnese language textbooks. The research aims to identify the structural patterns and discourse functions of passive forms in instructional materials used for language learning. The data consist of narrative and descriptive texts selected from Acehnese language textbooks, comprising two textbooks and five representative texts, which were analyzed to identify recurring passive patterns and their communicative roles. The analysis employs Interlinear Glossed Text (IGT) annotation and the Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) framework to examine how passive forms are structured and used in context. The study identifies four types of passive constructions in Acehnese: agentive, agentless, generic, and stative-resultative. The findings show that verbal prefixes play a central role in organizing participant roles and shaping clause focus. In the analyzed texts, passive constructions function not only to promote the patient but also to manage topical emphasis in narrative discourse. The results further indicate that the textbooks tend to emphasize a limited range of passive forms, which may influence learners’ understanding of Acehnese voice patterns. These findings suggest implications for discourse-based Acehnese language teaching and future research on textual organization.
References
Begus, G., & Dąbkowski, M. (2025). The origins of the Austronesian voice system and
subject-only restriction. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/c9765_v2
Bogren, S. V. (2024). Takituduh Bunun and the Split Voice Hypothesis. Available at SSRN
4832713. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4832713
Breed, A., & Olmen, D. Van. (2021). The Passive as an Impersonalisation Strategy in
Afrikaans and Dutch: A Corpus Investigation. Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low
Countries Studies, 45(2), 171–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/03096564.2021.1906598
Brodkin, D. (2022). Two steps to high absolutive syntax: Austronesian voice and agent focus
in Mandar. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 31(4), 465–516. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-022-09248-0
de Lima Júnior, J. C., & Augusto, M. R. A. (2017). PassiveP and the Distinction between
Eventive, Resultative and Stative Passives. https://doi.org/10.35520/diadorim.2017.v19n0a13513
Durie, M. (1988). The so-called passive of Acehnese. Language, 104–113.
El-Marzouk, G. (2009). The dynamics and statics of passive. GAGL: Groninger Arbeiten
zur germanistischen Linguistik, 49, 1-40.
Embick, D. (2004). On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic
Inquiry, 35(3), 355-392.
Ginn, M., Tjuatja, L., He, T., Rice, E., Neubig, G., Palmer, A., & Levin, L. S. (2024).
GlossLM: Multilingual Pretraining for Low-Resource Interlinear Glossing. arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.06399.
He, T., Choi, K., Tjuatja, L., Robinson, N., Shi, J., Watanabe, S., ... & Levin, L. (2024,
August). Wav2Gloss: Generating interlinear glossed text from speech. In Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (pp. 568-582).
Kaiser, E. (2015). Impersonal and generic reference: a cross-linguistic look at Finnish and
English narratives. Eesti Ja Soome-Ugri Keeleteaduse Ajakiri. Journal of Estonian
and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, 6(2), 9–42. https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2015.6.2.01
Lawler, J. M. (1977). A Agrees with B in Achenese: A Problem for Relational Grammar.
In Grammatical relations (pp. 219–248). Brill.
Legate, J. A. (2012). Subjects in Acehnese and the nature of the passive. Language, 88(3),
495–525.
Lingle, W. A. (2018). Nominalizations, agentless passives and social actor mystification:
newspaper editorials on the Greek financial crisis (Doctoral dissertation, University
of Birmingham).
Mackenzie, J. L. (2019). 11 The Functional Discourse Grammar approach to syntax. Current
approaches to syntax: A comparative handbook, 3.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110540253
Rahmah, A. T., & Subiyanto, A. (2024). Syntactic Analysis of Makassar Question Words:
An X-Bar Theory Approach. Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics, 193–210.
Shin, N., & Miller, K. (2022). Children’s acquisition of morphosyntactic variation.
Language Learning and Development, 18(2), 125–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1941031
Syrett, K. (2024). Variation by Context: The Importance of Pragmatics and the Discourse.
Language Learning and Development.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2023.2239783
Taib, R., & Mulyadi. (2023). Passive Construction of Acehnese Language: X-Bar Analysis.
Retorika: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Dan Pengajarannya, 16.
https://doi.org/10.26858/retorika.v16i1.32016
Velasco, D. G. (2025). Functional Discourse Grammar. The Encyclopedia of Applied
Linguistics, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0443.pub2
Wegner, D. (2019). The properties of perfect (ive) and (eventive) passive participles: An
identity approach. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1).
Wildan. (2010). Kaidah Bahasa Aceh. Geuci.
Yan, J., & Jiang, J. (2025). Discourse analysis and High School English Reading
Teaching. International Journal of Educational Development, 1(2), 72-79. https://doi.org/10.63313/ijed.9019
Zhao, X., Ozaki, S., Anastasopoulos, A., Neubig, G., & Levin, L. (2020, December).
Automatic interlinear glossing for under-resourced languages leveraging
translations. In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational
Linguistics (pp. 5397-5408).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The author is responsible for acquiring the permission(s) to reproduce any copyrighted figures, tables, data, or text that are being used in the submitted paper. Authors should note that text quotations of more than 250 words from a published or copyrighted work will require grant of permission from the original publisher to reprint. The written permission letter(s) must be submitted together with the manuscript.






