| Summary: | In many Malayic languages (western Austronesian), subjects can undergo A’-movement (relativization, wh-movement, focus-movement, and topicalization) without any special qualification, whereas non-subject nominals can only A’-move if the verb appears without a voice prefix. We propose a novel account for the syntax of voice alternations in Malayic languages, synthesizing insights in the prior proposals of Aldridge 2008 and Nomoto 2015, 2021. Furthermore, adopting the view that phase impenetrability effects reflect word order determination at each phase level (Fox and Pesetsky 2005), our proposal derives both the general subject-only A’-extraction restriction and its limited exception and associated morphological restrictions. The proposal is motivated by our original data on voice and extraction in Suak Mansi Desa, a previously undescribed Malayic language of western Borneo, which we then extend to Standard Indonesian and Standard Malay as well as various other dialects and languages of the region. Peer reviewed
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