A role and reference grammar account of Bonggi adversative constructions

Some researchers have reported that the occurrence of adversative constructions in Western Austronesian languages is based on split intransitivity. They argue that adversatives can be formed from intransitive verbs whose single argument is an undergoer, but adversatives cannot be formed from intransitive verbs whose single argument is an actor. This paper shows that intransitive verbs whose single argument is an undergoer do not form a homogenous class; instead, adversative constructions are formed from a subset of intransitive verbs whose single argument is an undergoer.