Semantic Verb Classes and Regularity of Voice Paradigms in Tagalog

There are two major hypotheses regarding regularity of voice paradigms in Tagalog: (i) the voice system is chaotic; and (ii) any voice form is possible, given availability of relevant participants. This paper aims at testing a third hypothesis, one that suggests that verb roots of similar semantics may form similar voice paradigms. A survey of native Tagalog speakers was conducted to elicit acceptability judgments for a questionnaire consisting of locative, instrumental, benefactive, and causal voice forms for 20 verb roots that were grouped into four intuitively established semantic classes, in order to test if there are differences between roots in the ability to promote such participants—which have little semantic dependence on the type of the predicate they cooccur with—into the subject position with an appropriate voice form. The survey results point at validity of the established semantic classes and at a tendency for regularity in them.