none 10.1075/slcs.240.22bar John Benjamins Publishing Company John Benjamins Publishing Company 1757 194566506 9101345 1421186 202605110819000000 10.1075 2026-05-11T06:21:56Z 2026-05-08T05:25:42Z 0 0165-7763 10.1075/slcs https://benjamins.com/ catalog/slcs Sonja Riesberg LaCiTO – CNRS https://ror.org/025esck76 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0252-0910 Uta Reinöhl University of Freiburg https://ror.org/0245cg223 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2829-682X Birgit Hellwig University of Cologne https://ror.org/00rcxh774 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4696-0827 From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations The documentarist turn, i.e., the growing impact of documentary concepts and practices within general linguistics, has increased awareness of the empirical foundations of our discipline, accompanied by an appreciation of the value of observable linguistic behaviour. Today, there exist well-annotated, audiovisual data collections for many—if still far from enough—endangered or un(der)described languages across the world, each striving to present a “lasting, multipurpose record of a language” (Himmelmann 2006). Documentary data is increasingly supporting theory-building on a larger scale, which is where the present volume steps in: What does the shift towards more diverse, ecologically valid data types mean for synchronic and diachronic linguistic analyses and typological generalizations? This question is addressed by this volume’s far-ranging contributions on academic and societal affordances (Part I), interrelations between corpus design and avenues of research (Part II), as well as synchronic (Part III) and diachronic (Part IV) research questions. 240 5 7 2026 5 7 2026 9789027234001 9789027243881 John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam 10.1075/slcs.240 http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027243881 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1075/slcs.240/html https://www.jbe-platform.com/deliver/fulltext/9789027243881.pdf Maria Bardají Universitat de Barcelona https://ror.org/021018s57 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3512-0435 Rowena Garcia University of the Philippines Manila https://ror.org/01rrczv41 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1363-542X Christoph Bracks University of Frankfurt https://ror.org/04cvxnb49 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5431-7682 Evan Kidd Australian National University https://ror.org/019wvm592 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4301-2290 Comparative notes on Tagalog, Indonesian, and Totoli Abstract Language documentation has the broad aim of building a representative evidence base across typologically diverse languages and contexts of use. One such context that is gaining increased attention is language acquisition, owing to its importance in language maintenance in an era of significant language endangerment and loss. In this chapter we discuss the acquisition of a typologically important feature of Austronesian languages — symmetrical voice — to which Nikolaus Himmelmann has made distinguished contributions. We consider three languages that span the commonly made divide between Philippine-type and Indonesian-type languages: Tagalog, Jakarta Indonesian, and Totoli. We first compare the previous literature on the acquisition of Tagalog and Indonesian, for which there is significant data. We then consider how Totoli differs from Philippine- and Indonesian-type languages, and, based on a preliminary corpus observation, make predictions on the acquisition process of the Totoli voice system. 5 7 2026 5 7 2026 610 641 10.1075/slcs.240.22bar https://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs.240.22bar https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1075/slcs.240.22bar/html 10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5533 10.1017/S0305000900010126 Linguistik Indonesia Arka 21 113 2003 Voice Systems in the Austronesian Languages of Nusantara: Typology, Symmetricality and Undergoer Orientation Voice and Grammatical Relations in Austronesian Languages Arka 90 2008 Objective Voice and Control into Subject Clauses in Balinese 10.1515/9783111459929 10.3390/languages8030188 Philippine Journal of Linguistics Bautista 14 25 1983 Word Order in Tagalog Child Language 10.1075/la.73.20bil 10.1037/0033-295X.113.4.787 The Acquisition Sketch Project Bracks 87 2023 Broadening Language Documentation with Child Language Data: First-Hand Experience from Tolitoli Bracks, Christoph, and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. In preparation. “How Long Does It Take for a Language to Disappear? Rapid and Radical Language Shift in the Village of Gio (Sulawesi, Indonesia).” 10.18716/dch/a.00000014 10.26181/21859608.v1 10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-011731 10.1515/9783110864540 10.1515/9783110224443 The Acquisition Sketch Project Defina 39 2023 Sketch Acquisition Manual (SAM), Part II: The Acquisition Sketch 10.2307/414842 10.1017/S0305000900013106 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01181.x 10.1080/23311983.2024.2432139 Philippine Journal of Linguistics Galang 13 1 1982 Acquisition of Tagalog Verb Morphology: Linguistic and Cognitive Factors Tagalog Corpus Garcia 2019 Child Language Corpus 10.1080/15475441.2020.1814780 10.1515/ling-2021-0107 10.1080/10489223.2018.1525613 10.1017/S0305000919000618 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104859 10.1177/0142723718790317 A Longitudinal Corpus of Tagalog Child-Directed and Children’s Speech Garcia 10.21415/T5MS43 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199664993.001.0001 The Acquisition Sketch Project Hellwig 2023 The Acquisition of Verb Argument Structure in Basilectal Jakarta Indonesian Hidajat 2010 10.1515/ling.1998.36.1.161 10.1353/ol.1999.0010 10.15144/PL-518.7 10.15144/PL-518.123 10.4324/9780203821121 10.4324/9780203821121 10.1515/9783110197730.1 Voice and Grammatical Relations in Austronesian Languages Himmelmann 247 2008 Lexical Categories and Voice in Tagalog 10.1353/ol.2013.0021 Huber, Eva, Aireen Barrios, Rowena Garcia, Dagmar Jung, Evan Kidd, Balthasar Bickel, and Sabine Stoll. 2025. Child Language Corpus of Batangas Tagalog (Version 1.0) [Data set]. LaRS - Language Repository of Switzerland. 10.1038/s41598-025-96240-y 10.1177/01427237211066405 Phrase Structure and Grammatical Relations in Tagalog Kroeger 1993 DoBeS Totoli documentation Leto 2005–2010 Spoken Language Patterns of Selected Filipino Toddlers and Preschool Children Marzan 2013 Correctness of Verb Inflections Coding Aspect and Tense Used by Five 14 to 44-Month-Old Filipino Children: An Exploratory Descriptive Longitudinal Study Marzan 2014 Symmetrical Voice Constructions in Besemah: A Usage-Based Approach McDonnell 2016 10.1162/opmi_a_00199 Voice Selection in Balinese Discourse Pastika 1999 10.1515/ling.1998.36.4.807 10.1037/rev0000560 10.2307/j.ctvjsf414 10.7551/mitpress/9700.001.0001 The Many Faces of Austronesian Voice Systems: Some New Empirical Studies Quick 221 2005 Topic Continuity, Voice and Word Order in Pendau 10.1515/9781614518716 10.1353/lan.2019.0055 10.1075/sl.20061.rie When Agents Are not Subjects — What Symmetrical Voice Languages Can Tell Us about Word Order Variation Riesberg 10.1017/S0305000900001938 10.1353/lan.2018.0070 An Asymmetry in the Acquisition of Tagalog Relative Clauses Tanaka 2016 10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00069-4 Reconstruction, Classification, Description — Festschrift in Honor of Isidore Dyen Wolff 15 1996 The Development of the Passive Verb with Pronominal Prefix in Western Austronesian Languages