1975 Volume 1975 Issue 67 Pages 58-75
Warupu, an Australian Aboriginal language of North Queensland, is an ergative language. While it lacks a morphological passive, it does have a process that intransitivizes transitive verbs which might be termed the gali transformation. It also has strict concord between case and transivity. Through the gali transformation and case-transitivity concord, Warupu can express voice distinctions syntactically.
In this paper it is shown how Warupu can have voice expressions such as (i) medio-passive and (ii) passive, active and causative. Then, some historical and typological remarks on the gali constructions are given. And, finally the ergative nature of Warnηu snytax is discussed.