Covert Reciprocals in Indonesian

Abstract: Indonesian reciprocals can be expressed through overt reciprocal markers or covertly, via constructions that are not explicitly reciprocal in form. This study focuses on covert reciprocals, adpoting an analysis grounded in a symmetric event approach, in which reciprocal meaning arises from two coordinated subevents involving the same participants in reversed agent-patient roles. These representations of these subevents are syntactically intransitive, but semantically structured as a single symmetric event, allowing for reciprocal interpretation even in the absence of dedicated reciprocal morphology. We examine three main types of covert reciprocals in Indonesian. The first involves seemingly reduplicated verbal forms, which we analyze as instances of asyndetic coordination, where active and passive predicates are combined, resulting in a plural subject that bears both agent and patient roles. The second involves verb roots with the circumfix ber- -an , denoting temporally extended eventualities that, in the presence of plural subjects, yield a reciprocal interpretation through sequential subevents. The third type involves verb roots prefixed with ber -, analyzed as an instance of ber - functioning as a middle voice. This prefix typically indicates a coreferential interpretation that, with specific nominal bases, can produce a reciprocal reading. In all cases, these constructions have more general, independently attested meanings that allow—but do not require—a reciprocal reading. The analysis highlights the heterogeneity of reciprocal formation in Indonesian and shows how covert reciprocals are licensed through event semantics and context, rather than dedicated reciprocal morphology.