Karo Batak: passive, ergative or neither?

This paper focuses on three questions relating to Western Malayo-Polynesian syntactic typology. Two are general questions concerned with relevant syntactic theory; the first questions the formal differences between passive and ergative constructions and some of the difficulties that arise in distinguishing the two types of construction are discussed. Secondly the usefulness or otherwise of answering the first question is examined. The third question specifically addresses whether or not a Western Malayo-Polynesian language of Northern Sumatra, Karo Batak, is typologically ergative-like or whether the construction type that might be interpreted as ergative is in fact a passive